Not Quite Home

We just got some news about Claire. When Lauren was pregnant with her, she was tested for Group B Strep and the test came back positive. That meant that Lauren had to have antibiotics when she was in labor to keep Claire from contracting the disease. When it was time to deliver, she did get the antibiotics. However, there was still a 5% chance that Claire could still get the infection. They did a culture to see if she had it (all of this is a fairly normal situation for Labor & Delivery staff). Unfortunately, the culture was tainted (other germs were in the culture that weren't supposed to be in there) which meant that it was not conclusive. They are going to perform another culture on Claire today.....which means she cannot come home like she was supposed to. As you can imagine, this is not fun news for the any of us.

If the culture comes back negative, then she can go home and it's no big deal. If the culture comes back positive, Claire gets to stay at the hospital for about 4 days while they give her antibiotics through an IV (which is normally placed in the baby's thigh or in her head). That will not be much fun. At Terri's (Lauren's mom) suggestion, they started the antibiotics today until they find out the results of the culture.

The most annoying thing about this situation is that they have known since Monday morning that the first culture they performed was tainted. However, they chose not to do a second one until TODAY. If they had done the culture yesterday when they realized the first one was tainted, Mother and Baby could be coming home now. Wouldn't it be nice if doctors thought about these kinds of things a little more thoroughly. :(-

So for now, Lauren is at the hospital feeding Claire and waiting. Please keep all of us in your prayers, especially the new momma who was supposed to come home with her little, precious baby today.