Yesterday morning around 6:30 – Boxing Day – Cheyenne bottle-fed her baby Melody. The girl was breathing hard, she noticed it right away. “Her belly kept coming all the way in. She really had to try her best to get some air.”
‘This is not good’
The baby also had a significant increase, she looked pale and the skin under her mouth was a bit bluish. “This is not good, I thought. I immediately raised the alarm.”
In the doctor’s office in Maastricht, little Melody was sprayed. With a kind of mask, a medicine is administered that should make a child less suffocating. “More and more doctors and nurses came in. Everyone immediately thought of the RS virus. We were told she had to be hospitalized.”
Many children’s ICs are full, but don’t panic
The professional association of nurses and health professionals of the Netherlands (V&VN) reported yesterday that many children’s integrated circuits are full due to a combination of RS, flu, and other respiratory infections. Due to the crowds, neighboring countries currently have nowhere to take in children from the Netherlands, according to the V&VN.
Pediatrician and president of the Dutch Children’s Association Károly Illy stressed on Monday that there is no panic. According to Illy, none of the CIs – there are seven in the Netherlands for children – has ‘had to think about moving abroad’.
Melody’s blood oxygen level was too low. Only a place for her had to be found outside Maastricht. It has become Weert.
Helpless mother
“I was completely shocked,” says mother Cheyenne. “What’s happening to me now, I thought when I got into that ambulance.” On the way, Melody has an oxygen tube up her nose. “I tried to keep calm. But then you’re so helpless as a mother. She’s still so young.”
Take it easy and let it all hang over your head for a while, Cheyenne decided. “Of course you hope you don’t have to go to a hospital a little further away. But it’s very nice, of course, that all this effort is made for you.”
As the mother tells Cheyenne on the phone that Melody is fortunately improving rapidly, the child himself makes approving noises in the background. “She speaks again, yes. She is also regaining color. Last night she no longer needed oxygen.”
Recover from fright
Incidentally, the test result that is to officially prove whether it is the RS virus is yet to come. “But there’s really no doubt about that here.” They hope to be able to go home tomorrow, to recover from the shock together.
Angela Borsboom experienced the same thing earlier this month in another part of the Netherlands. Her son Eray, 13 months, was hospitalized in Capelle aan den IJssel for a week with the RS virus. There was no room for him in the Rotterdam hospital where they had initially entered.
Too little oxygen
Eray is also babbling happily today. Monday December 12th was different. “She had a fever and I saw how she was getting more and more stuffy. I saw her belly in the ribs that kept twitching as she breathed.”
Through the general practitioner, they ended up in the Rotterdam emergency room around noon. Here, too, it turned out: too little oxygen in the blood. “An oxygen tube was immediately put into his nose. And the mucus was taken from his nose and throat with a cotton swab. I thought about getting tested for corona, but they also wanted to look at RS.”
Pretty bad
The latter virus was soon revealed to be the culprit. “We were told that Eray had to be hospitalized, but that there was no room in Rotterdam.”
The child could go to Capelle aan den IJssel. And so this mother was suddenly in an ambulance with her baby. “The paramedics were very kind, they reassured me a lot.”
No matter how well they have been taken care of, the enjoyment is of course different. “He was quite ill, I was really worried, especially when it turned out in Capelle that he needed even more oxygen than he had already received, which shocked me for a while.”
Soft tea towel
A tea towel, that’s how his son Eray describes when he was so sick. A tea towel who also needed tube feeding for a few days: “He was very weak, it’s not nice to see your baby like this”.
After more than a week, Eray was allowed to go home, where he is now continuing to recover. “He’s still coughing a lot, but luckily he’s healing.”
As with Melody in Limburg, admission to a pediatric intensive care unit was not required for Eray. But in those special intensive care units they have their hands full with other sick children.
However, this situation is not unusual for the RS season, says Károly Illy, president of the Dutch Pediatric Association. According to him, the pressure on children’s CIs is currently comparable to that of 2018 and 2019.
Be careful
However, the peak is early, normally in January. “But so far there are enough beds. We can do it.”
This afternoon the teaching hospitals will discuss the situation with Illy, among others. “We have such consultations every week when the children’s chips are busy,” she explains. “We always have to make sure that enough beds remain. We discuss any additional measures.”
