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FRIDAY, July 11, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Shelene Keith was calm and collected when it was time to head to the hospital for the birth of her son in 1997.
After all, the California woman was a veteran; her daughter, Tayler, is now 13. So, Shelene and her family just looked forward to a beautiful birth.
A few hours later, Jesse made his debut. "We were all excited to have a beautiful, normal baby," Shelene, now 40, says.
But the trouble started when they took him home a day and a half later.
"Basically, he crashed," Shelene recalls. "His breathing started to be irregular." When his temperature rose to 102, the Keiths returned to the hospital. "By the time we got him to the hospital, he was gray and his temperature was 103.5," she says.
Then came the news that changed the Keiths' lives forever: During childbirth, Jesse had contracted a type of bacterium called Group B streptococcus, or Group B strep. It's the most common cause of sepsis, or blood infection, and meningitis, an infection of the lining and fluid around the brain, in newborns, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Jesse had both sepsis and meningitis, the doctor informed the family. "He told us he had a 10 percent chance of living," Shelene remembers. "Then the doctor looked at us and said, 'This is completely preventable.'"
But Shelene's doctor had not screened her for group B strep, a test involving a simple culture that is now recommended for every pregnant woman at 35 to 37 weeks. If the bacteria is detected, a women in labor is typically given antibiotics intravenously, preventing most cases of transmission to newborns.
Over the next few grueling days, Shelene and her husband, a Christian recording artist, relied on family support and their faith. When they weren't in the neonatal intensive care unit, playing her husband's healing songs to their baby, they were in a quiet room nearby, she says. "We prayed for healing for Jessie," she says.
In the midst of their grief, they also knew they would somehow reach out to other families to prevent this tragedy from happening to someone else.
After aggressive treatment and 17 days in intensive care, Jesse was sent home. The road ahead wasn't rosy -- at one month, he was rushed back to the hospital with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, which required surgery.
Since then, he's had a problem with crossed eyes and has a little difficulty learning now that he's in kindergarten. But those are problems that can be overcome, his mother says.
When Jesse was still an infant, Shelene and her husband, Chris, launched The Jesse Cause Foundation. They have devoted countless hours since to spreading the word about Group B strep testing. "Our heart was with each family that was going through [strep B infection] because they didn't get this $25 test," she says.
Over the course of the last six years, the Keiths have set up an educational Web site, met with the CDC, spoken to hundreds of civic groups and gone to medical meetings to urge doctors to do universal testing. Finally, last year, the CDC recommended universal testing, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists followed suit.
Their next project, Shelene says, is to print and distribute 300,000 informational pamphlets.
While Shelene says the battle for awareness isn't over, she sees some cause for celebration. "Jesse's in kindergarten. He's a brilliant and gorgeous 5-year-old," she says.
And the National Institutes of Health has declared July as National Group B Strep Awareness Month.
The fact that it is in July is especially bittersweet, Shelene notes.
"Jesse was born in July, and the [foundation] president's baby died in July of Group B strep," she says.
More information
To find out more about Group B strep, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here's more about the Jesse Cause Foundation.
