Strollerderby : fatal

Mother with Herpes Unwittingly Kills Baby with a Kiss

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:09:00 GMT

This heart-wrenching story is made bearable by the courage of the mother it involves, who has taken her tragedy as a chance to educate others.

Ruth Schofield contacted the herpes simplex virus (HSV) for the first time when she was in her final term of pregnancy. She was prescribed antibiotics for her mouth ulcers, which were still present when she gave birth to baby Jennifer.

With no warnings to the contrary, Schofield naturally kissed and cuddled her newborn baby. Soon after her birth, Jennifer stopped feeding and seemed overly sleepy, so Schofield readmitted her to the hospital. Jennifer had no cold sores or outward signs of having contracted herpes, but the virus had spread throughout her organs, and she died when she was just a few weeks old.

Doctors believe that herpes was deadly in this case because Schofield had never been exposed to the virus until the very end of her pregnancy, so her body didn’t have time to build up antibodies and pass them on to her daughter.

A few years after the loss of Jennifer—and 15 months after the birth of her second child—Schofield has started campaigning to raise awareness about the potential deadliness of HSV, which kills six babies a year in the UK, where Schofield lives.

“There is not one single sign in a chemist's and nowhere on leaflets does it say not to go near an end-term pregnant mother or newborn baby [if you have HSV]," she says. I have to agree that there is far too little awareness about this fatal, yet avoidable, situation.

Did you know that a cold sore could kill a baby?

Photo: parents.com

Boy Injured Car Surfing on Mom's Ford

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:54:00 GMT

This is one of those awful stories in which parents did something so reckless that you want to mercilessly berate them--but you can't because they have already learned their lesson the very hard way.

In this case, a Utah mother discovered that car surfing is not the best way to bond with your kids. The mother of a 8-year-old and a 10-year-old son routinely let her kids take a ride on the outside of her Ford Expedition while she drove around the block at about 5 mph. The kids would stand on the running board, and hold onto the sideview mirror and the handles inside the car.

This was all fun and games until her son took a fall as she went over a speed bump. He had to be flown to a hospital, where he was treated for critical head injuries. He is now in stable condition. His mother has been charged with child abuse.

As horrible as this accident was, it could have been much worse. A report from 2000 found that nearly 500 people were killed car surfing over a five-year period.

Photo: Mochinbach/Flickr

Train Hits Bus, Kills Seven Children

Cole Gamble — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A train struck a school bus at a railroad crossing in France, killing seven of the kids and injuring a couple dozen people...

The bus was carrying 50 students, 5 adults and a driver. This marks one of the deadliest train accidents in years for France. The cause for the accident is not currently known.

Photo: reuters