Lourette Du Toit, a Dermal Aesthetician and the brain behind a Medical & Aesthetics Practice in Sandton says she had to fight hard to save her son’s life when he contracted a virus hours after his birth.
Lourette is married to Marlon Du Toit a photographer, the two have been together for at least 6 years.
The mother of two tells Glamour that she fell pregnant for the second time in 2018 and was very happy when she discovered she was going to have a boy, but her excitement was short-lived when she had to endure a regular visit to the hospital as her son constantly had breathing problems.
Du Toit’s baby comes earlier than expected forcing her to be rushed to the hospital where she gave birth through c-section due to complications.
“I had spent the morning of the day at Design Quarters but then later I started to feel there was something wrong and I noticed blood coming out, I then phone a friend who is a nurse and as soon as I tell her my story, she immediately instructs me to wait for her so she could take me to the hospital.
“I wasn’t immediately alarmed as I had been regularly visiting my Dr and doing the best I could to take care of myself and the baby.
“So we get to the hospital, my friend, Sam notices my stomach was becoming rock hard but I was still not feeling any pain and was still very relaxed, so she took photos of me as I was helping my team over the phone with month-end reports, while hooked up onto monitors.
Then I was still assisting my staff when an emergency doctor appeared and explains to me that the baby’s heart rate is not beating normally, therefore, they needed to do an operation to save the baby,” she says.
After giving birth Du Toit noticed that her baby who was named Jack refused to be breastfed. The infant soon started making weird sounds and this worried the mother and she alerted nurses.
She adds, “I called a nurse. The nurse assisted me but midway through she stopped, she exclaimed: “No, this baby is grunting” and ran off. I was confused and did not know what was now going on.
A few seconds later the nurse was back with the Pediatrician who had helped deliver Jack. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, my newborn child was fighting for his life.”
The doctors quickly put him on an Oxygen Tank and gently told the mother that her son needed to go into ICU.
“As soon as they said those words, my world crashed down, and this was the beginning of my journey with Jack. They wheeled him out of my room, and there I was all alone, flat on my back, connected to a catheter and recovering from being sliced open and now … my baby was taken to ICU,” the mother of two says.
Du Toit says that was difficult for her to comprehend as she had taken every precaution during her pregnancy and had kept appointments with doctors and had told him about her back pains but he did not see any problems but a normal pregnancy.
“The doctors gave us an update on Jack’s condition, they told us that in addition to his low oxygen levels, he picked up a bacterial infection in one of his lungs.
They also informed us that they were still doing tests as they suspected a heart condition and would tell us about the results in due course.
This became a little unbearable as now we were told we are unable to take him home because of the challenges he had to face soon after his birth. She adds.
Du Toit’s son recovered, but 4 months later he had to be taken back to the hospital again after he struggled with the same problems again.
She says that her son was going to a nearby kindergarten when he suffered difficulty in breathing.
Du Toit says they were informed that their son had contracted 3 different viruses: Adeno, Rhino and the big one RSV.
She says Jack was again unable to breathe as his oxygen level begun to drop and he was now coughing. He was again taken into ICU to ease his breathing.
