'It felt like I had lost a limb'

After her son’s streptococcus ordeal, mother calls for routine NHS testing to detect condition that kills one baby a week

- MAYA OPPENHEIM

Toni Alonzo-Grazier found herself waking up in the night having dreamt of hospital alarms sounding in the aftermath of her newborn child being diagnosed with a common life-threatening bacterial infection.

Doctors discovered something was wrong with her baby after he started grunting – with hospital staff then learning he had a fast heart rate. Her newborn was placed in intensive care for a week as doctors sought to treat his group B streptococcus – with the baby contracting the illness again and later being readmitted to hospital for another 12 days.

The fear that her baby would die had a long-term impact on her mental health: Ms Alonzo-Grazier’s therapist says the ordeal left her with borderline post-traumatic stress disorder. She was discharged after his birth, while her son was kept in hospital for several days as doctors scrambled to work out what was wrong with him.

“Being discharged without him was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through,” Ms Alonzo-Grazier tells The Independent. “I cried all the way out of the hospital. I can still picture that walk out of the hospital.”

The 36-year-old, who lives in the West Midlands, is now calling for all pregnant women to be offered a free test for the life-threatening condition as part of their NHS care as she warned many parents have lost their child to the illness. She said she had never heard of the condition before, had not been offered a test for herself during pregnancy, and had no idea the illness could be detected as she carried her child.