When Meg Edmonds saw two confirmation lines appear on her pregnancy test last spring, she felt nothing short of ‘pure excitement’. The 22-year-old, from Staffordshire, had always wanted two children close together in age.
The next day, she scoured the shops for a ‘big sister’ jumper for her 11-month-old, Cordelia, so they could surprise her partner Ben Brookes with the happy news when he got home from his job at an aggregation firm.
What followed was a ‘really straightforward’ pregnancy and birth.
‘She was 11 days overdue, but I had a really lovely, very quick water birth with her, just like I did with Cordelia,’ Meg tells Metro.
The baby was born in the early hours of Sunday 1st February, and her proud parents named her Magnolia, or Maggie for short.
10 days later, she died of multiple organ failure after coming into contact with the cold sore virus.
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Looking back at pictures of herself from February, Meg can now see a cold sore on her lips.
‘I’ve got pictures of me in the birthing pool with the lesion on my mouth, and it looks very fresh at that point,’ Meg tells Metro. ‘It was only in the 24 hours after I gave birth that my symptoms developed much further, in what we now believe was a primary HSV infection.’
A primary HSV infection is the very first time a person is exposed to the herpes simplex virus (HSV), with no pre-existing antibodies to fight it off.
For many, primary infection is asymptomatic, or has minor symptoms including cold sores. But others can experience more severe symptoms including swollen neck glands, fever, and lesions elsewhere on the body. To babies, it can be fatal.
‘By Sunday night I started to get a really sore throat and sores on my lips, and then the next morning, I had ulcers all inside my mouth and on the inside of my lips,’ remembers Meg.
‘I was in a lot of pain with it. It was really hard to eat and drink comfortably.’
When she raised this with health professionals, Meg says she was told her symptoms were likely hormonal, or that she was dehydrated and needed to drink more while breastfeeding.
Two days later, Magnolia stopped waking for feeds.
wo days later, Magnolia stopped waking for feeds.
‘The first couple of days, she was alert and would cry every time we put her down or if she was hungry, but by Tuesday, she was noticeably more sleepy,’ says Meg.
Magnolia was tested for jaundice at her next check-up – a very common condition in newborns, which can cause sleepiness and usually corrects itself with regular feeding.
‘We were just told to just keep topping her up with milk, basically,’ she says.
Although feeding was going well initially, Meg’s right nipple became visibly sore and too tender to breastfeed from. Initially, she thought this was caused by Cordelia accidentally pulling Magnolia off her breast. In hindsight, she believes this was likely due to the HSV infection.
The NHS advises new mothers should not breastfeed babies if they have herpes sores around their nipples and they should not feed the baby expressed milk from the affected breast.
Meg says she was not told this at the time, and continued to pump through the pain.
By day five, Friday, it was taking up to half an hour to wake Maggie for a feed, and Ben and Meg noticed her breathing seemed uneven during the night. They say they raised this the next morning at the hospital, but were again reassured it was due to weight loss and feeding.
The couple claim a similar message was delivered throughout follow-up appointments that weekend.
‘I couldn’t breastfeed off my right side at all at this point, it was so painful, which again they thought that was perhaps the reason why she was so sleepy,’ says Meg.
‘So I was just told to just keep feeding her, basically, keep expressing, keep giving her top-ups of milk, and she will eventually become more alert.’
On Monday evening, at eight days old, Maggie looked grey and felt cold to the touch. Her parents called an ambulance.
‘Her temperature was 34 degrees. Her oxygen was very low. And she had a really high pitch, really weak cry. The ambulance came and clearly they could see how poorly she was,’ says Meg.
‘We were blue-lighted to one hospital, and then after getting there very quickly, they realised how critical she was and we were transferred to Birmingham Children’s.’
A doctor questioned the sores that were still visible on Meg’s lips and Maggie was put on a cycle of HSV antiviral treatment before tests for the infection were even confirmed.
‘They were amazing. They tried to do everything for her, but it was just far too late,’ says Meg.
‘She passed away on the morning of Wednesday 11 February.’
In the blur of tragedy, Meg struggles to remember the exact moment she was told the cold sore virus, which she had unknowingly passed on, had killed her daughter.
‘It was either in the hours before she passed away, or the hours afterwards, it was very close,’ she says ‘Obviously it just completely broke me. I felt it was a total failure on my part.’
It took a couple of weeks for the news to sink in, then anger followed. Ben and Meg are now seeking legal support to help identify if there were missed opportunities for medical professionals to have spotted Maggie’s HSV infection sooner.
‘I obviously feel an unbearable amount of guilt, and I think I always will, regardless of any outcome of any potential legal case, but I do try to remind myself that I tried to get help,’ says Meg. I did everything that I could with the knowledge that I had, and ultimately, we trust professionals.’
Meg is sharing her story to support The Lullaby Trust’s Infection Prevention Week, which this year has the theme ‘your baby, your boundaries’.
New research from the charity finds 57% of UK parents or carers have had a family member kiss their baby without asking, and nearly half (46%) feel uncomfortable asking friends and family to wash their hands before touching or holding their baby.
44% of UK parents/carers have felt uncomfortable about a stranger touching their baby but have not spoken up.
The charity wants all parents to know that protecting their baby from infection, particularly in the first few weeks of life when babies are most vulnerable, is something they never need to justify.
‘My baby died from HSV that came from me, but it could’ve been anyone,’ says Meg. ‘It all comes down to the fact that no one in our family or friends knew a cold sore could kill a baby despite most regularly having cold sores themselves.
‘If I’d known that a cold sore could kill a baby, then my daughter would still be here.’