For 10 sweet seconds, Friday September 6 last year looked like being the happiest day of Alison Richards' life. With her newborn son Owen lying on her chest, she experienced the exhilaration of first-time motherhood. "I felt such a heightened emotion. After all that pain and effort, I was suddenly holding my baby. And he was gorgeous."
He was also silent. "It looked as if he was asleep. I said to the midwife, "I can't believe he slept through all that." She replied, "A lot of babies sleep right through the birth. That's quite normal."
Then everything changed. In a scene that could have come "straight out of ER", the delivery suite, at Oxford's John Radcliffe hospital, suddenly filled with doctors, who spent half an hour frantically trying to resuscitate the 3.47kg (7lb 10 and a half oz) baby, applying electric currents to his tiny chest, as Alison lay nearby, still having contractions to get rid of the placenta.
The doctors didn't succeed. Owen - whose heart had been beating a minute before his birth - had succumbed to Group B streptococcus (GBS), a virulent bacterial infection that afflicts 700 newborn babies each year, claims 100 lives, and can cause brain damage. More common than spina bifida or muscular dystrophy in newborns, it is only now becoming widely recognised by health professionals and there is no UK-wide NHS policy for preventing it. Yet, tragically for Owen and his parents, it is easily treatable.
For Alison, 30, and her husband Craig, 33, their experience was "the most horrendous and surreal you could imagine. One minute, we were experiencing the most heightened emotion, and the next, the lowest of the low. I remember I kept saying: 'I love you, I love you,'" says Alison, an IT sales account manager.
"The most awful thing was just hearing Alison wailing: 'My baby, my baby. This can't be happening to me,'" adds her husband, a development manager for a software company.
Their grief was compounded six weeks later when the postmortem examination pointed to a cause of death they had neither heard of, nor seen mention of in the five pregnancy books they had read in preparation for having their first baby - including one provided by the NHS for every expectant mother. "We just didn't know what it was. It was never discussed at antenatal classes, by the midwife, or by the consultant who checked me in labour," says Alison, from Stonesfield in Oxfordshire.
Even more distressing was the fact that, had they been aware of it, Owen's death could have been prevented if Alison had received intravenous antibiotics - costing a mere £10 - throughout her labour. "I'd done everything I could to protect him - not drinking, not eating shellfish, wearing gloves when gardening, being really paranoid - yet I couldn't protect him from this," says Alison. "But knowledge is power. Something so horrendous could have been avoided with quite simple steps, and that was so frustrating."
GBS is a bacteria that lives in the intestines of a third of the population and in the vaginas of one in four women - a fact that only becomes problematic when these women give birth. GBS is one of the few bacteria that can get past all the unborn baby's defences, crossing the cervix and amniotic membrane and multiplying in the amniotic fluid to create a pre-birth infection.
When this happens, it often triggers labour, or the amniotic membrane ruptures - the mother's waters break - causing the baby even greater exposure to the bacteria. Alarm bells should ring if this happens before 37 weeks of pregnancy, if the mother has a temperature above 37.8C (100F) during labour, or if the waters break 18-24 hours before labour starts.
This last scenario was what happened with Alison. Her waters broke 24 hours before she gave birth and 14 hours before she was admitted into hospital. "Before your waters break, your baby is in a totally sterile environment. But when your waters break, the sac tears, and infection can get in," she explains. "Yet no one told me this was a warning sign: that if your waters are broken, your baby is at risk of an infection."
The community midwife checked her twice, and a doctor examined her in the second stage of labour, but the question of GBS was never mentioned. Her labour went so well that she even listened to a classical chill-out album and - eschewing pain relief - practised yoga.
"Even the doctors were totally confused by Owen's death," says Craig. "With most babies who die at birth, there's some indication that there's something wrong. But he looked like a totally normal boy. He was born on his due date and there were no signs of distress and no intervention. It was a textbook labour."
When the postmortem examination revealed their baby had GBS in his lungs - where it causes pneumonia - and stomach - where it can cause septicaemia - the Richards were directed to GBS Support, a charity set up by Jane Plumb and her husband, after their second baby died of the infection.
As well as offering support, the group lobbies for all pregnant women to be screened for GBS at 35 to 37 weeks, a policy adopted in the US and other European countries but ruled out by the Department of Health on the grounds that the old tests are too unreliable and - GBS Support believes - the new ones too expensive.
"We'd like every pregnant woman to be swabbed at 35 to 37 weeks using reliable culture methods that are used in the US and are now being piloted privately in this country," says Jane Plumb. "The accurate screening costs £18 - that's hardly a lot, is it?"
If the mother is found to be a carrier, the group then advocates a course of intravenous antibiotics, every four hours during labour, as used in the US. "Effective prevention is simply by means of injections of antibiotics into a vein during labour," says Professor Robert Feldman, a leading researcher in GBS prevention. "This could prevent three out of five of these babies dying."
While the Department of Health has so far appeared unconvinced, it will have to listen more attentively in the coming weeks to calls for a UK-wide implementation of health policy to include screening, since the Richards' case has been vigorously taken up by David Cameron, their local Conservative MP.
After receiving a "disappointing" reply to questions on the issue from the health minister, Jacqui Smith, the MP for Witney tabled an early day motion the week before last, drawing attention to the fact that GBS deaths "can be drastically reduced by adopting screening programmes for all pregnant women and taking precautionary action; and calling on the government to investigate instituting similar schemes in the UK as a matter of urgency".
Cameron, who has a baby son of his own, has also applied for an adjournment debate in the Commons, outlining the issue in full, to which the health minister will have to respond. "The Department of Health hasn't answered the question I put to them [about why there is no screening]. But this is one of those issues that isn't going to go away - and we want better answers from the government. These are avoidable deaths. Other countries have been able to prevent them, so why can't we?" he says.
The Richards, meanwhile, insist they are not angry with the hospital - where another baby died of GBS on the same day - as much as saddened by the lack of a UK-wide screening and prevention policy. "People say aren't you angry? But I'm not angry with anyone apart from the government for not taking this sufficiently seriously," says Alison, who hopes to have another baby, despite fearing a repeat experience.
"There's a general culture where nobody talks about things going wrong and babies dying at birth. But the government needs to publish guidelines so that hospitals are aware - and the system can look after mothers.
"I want to help and I'm trying to raise awareness because that is something positive I can do for Owen. If just one more baby lives, it will have been worth it."
· You can contact GBS Support on 01444 416176 or by visiting www.gbss.org.uk/.
