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9th October 2024
04:32pm BST
Kathryn Thomas has opened up about the time her daughter was hospitalised with RSV.
Seeing your child in hospital is one of the most upsetting experiences a parent will face, but Kathryn is sharing her story to raise awareness about RSV.
RSV is a common respiratory virus that infects the nose, throat, and lungs. Most children will get it before they turn two-years-old, but some cases can be serious and will require hospital care.
Kathryn's daughter Grace was only three weeks old when she was admitted to hospital with RSV.
She told Newstalk: "They took her temperature – I had been taking her temperature – and she had a slightly raised temperature. They basically took her straight in, they did a spinal lumbar puncture on her."
"They put tubes in her nose to kind of try and clear out the mucus. We were in there for three days and the place was full of babies with RSV and I had never heard of it before.
“When I think back on it now, she was so teeny tiny – why didn’t I react sooner? Why didn’t I act sooner?” she admitted.
The mum was encouraged to get Grace checked out after another mum advised her to do so.
"I look back at photographs of her when we were in the hospital and she’s just so tiny and with the tubes in her hands and everything. To get a spinal lumbar puncture, I didn’t even know what that was," the mum-of-two added.
"They basically took her off me and took her away. That all probably happened in 20 minutes, but it was just the most terrifying thing because they’re so precious and it was the first time she had been away from me," she confessed.
Mums have been praising the mum-of-two for being so honest about the experience as many of us have felt the same way.
However, it's important to remember that we're all only trying our best when it comes to raising our families.
Most symptoms of RSV are mild, such as a runny nose, coughing, and sneezing and people usually recover within two to three weeks, but babies and toddlers are most vulnerable.
