A parenting influencer has gone viral after sharing a video of her infant son struggling to breathe; her video was meant to serve as a warning to parents to trust their instincts, as her five week old was initially sent home from the hospital despite being diagnosed with a virus.
Brittani Boren Leach, who frequently shares insight into her life as a mother of six children on her YouTube and Instagram, revealed last week that her infant son Cam was diagnosed with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) after he’d caught it from her older sons.
RSV is a “common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms,” according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), which notes that, while “most people recover in a week or two,” the virus can be serious for infants and older adults.
“Cam caught the virus that the boys had, but his breathing last night had me paranoid so we brought him to be seen,” Boren Leach wrote on her Instagram Story. “Positive for RSV, but thankfully we get to go home. Praying it gets better, not worse. My anxiety is through the roof.”
In a follow-up post shared the next day, the infant could be seen hooked up to oxygen. Boren Leach revealed that he’d been admitted to the hospital after she followed her instinct and sought a second opinion when she noticed the child was struggling to breathe.
“They are admitting him to the hospital. On one hand I am relieved he’s in good hands now and I trusted my instinct, on the other I am upset with yesterday’s care,” she wrote, before asking her followers to “please say a prayer” for Cam and herself, as she was “not handling this well”.
Boren Leach said that when she had first brought her son to the emergency room the day before, they had been made to wait for three hours before a doctor “looked at him for five minutes, said it’s RSV, and sent us home”.
“It didn’t feel right but I thought maybe I was just paranoid,” she wrote on her Stories.
She then compared the experience to the response from a second hospital, where she said doctors saw the five week old immediately, “were so kind and comforting,” and started Cam on oxygen. “They asked me if I was ok and I started crying,” she wrote.
The YouTuber also shared a photo of herself holding her infant son in the hospital, which she said was taken by her husband Jeff.
“My face probably says enough, but all of this has been extremely triggering for me,” she wrote. “I don’t typically use that word but I don’t know how else to describe it.”
While her son was being cared for in the hospital, Boren Leach shared important information about the virus with her followers. The mother of six said that Cam’s older brothers were “sick first,” but that their doctor said it was just a virus.
“They don’t usually test for RSV in older kids because they can fight it off and their symptoms are like a mild cold,” she explained. “We tried to keep Cam away from them as much as possible but with RSV it’s very contagious and sometimes inevitable.”
Boren Leach added that she first noticed something was wrong with the infant when he began experiencing congestion and a “small cough”. She said at the time it was “nothing too concerning” as she assumed he’d caught what his brothers had had.
However, after three days, the influencer said she noticed the infant’s cough was getting worse, especially at night, and he had begun having chest retractions, “which meant he was working hard to breathe”. She said it was at this point that she and her husband brought him to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with the virus but sent home.
Boren Leach also noted that the virus “peaks around day four or five, which means that’s when it’s at its worst,” and that the incubation period is two to eight days. She also encouraged parents to take their children to the emergency room if they see them experiencing chest retractions.
“Most of all… TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS,” she continued. “I felt crazy going back to another emergency room less than 24 hours after a doctor sent us home. The doctor there said he was very sick and was glad I brought him when I did.”
Boren Leach shared a video of Cam’s chest retractions as well, in which the infant could be seen struggling to inhale. According to Boston’s Children Hospital, chest retractions, which show “a child’s chest appear to sink in just below the neck or under their breastbone with each breath,” can be a sign of respiratory distress. “This is another way of trying to bring more air into their lungs,” the hospital states.
Boren Leach also posted another video taken while she, her husband and Cam were at the first emergency room, in which she claimed you can “audibly hear crackles” in his breathing.
“This really infuriates me,” she said, while noting that she used to be a paediatric nurse and “still questioned” if she needed to take her son back after the first doctor sent him home. “I can easily see how someone would stay home and this quickly develops into pneumonia or worse,” she added.
In follow-up posts, Boren Leach answered questions about the infant’s hospitalisation, with the influencer explaining how the five week old was treated. According to an update on Tuesday, Cam was able to leave the NICU (newborn intensive care unit) after four nights.
“Headed home after four nights in the NICU with RSV,” she captioned a video montage of the baby’s experience in the hospital, before expressing how grateful the family is to “get to take home a healthy boy”.
According to the CDC, while most children with RSV will experience mild, cold-like illness, it can also cause severe illness such bronchiolitis or pneumonia. “One to two out of every 100 children younger than six months of age with RSV infection may need to be hospitalised,” the health agency states.
The Independent has contacted Boren Leach for comment.
