This article is incredibly sad but we figured it could serve as a warning for people who are around very young babies. So, here goes. A woman in England made her baby fatally sick after she either kissed or touched the newborn while afflicted with a cold sore. Baby Mira’s immune system had not developed antibodies to fight off the virus. Her mother, Charlotte, developed her first cold sore a few days after giving birth, which went away the very next day. Unfortunately, that was enough time Mira to contract the virus.

Concerned that Mira seemed to lose interest in breastfeeding and was unusually drowsy, Charlotte consulted a doctor who assured her that everything seemed fine. Later, upon discovering pink spots on the baby’s belly, Charlotte her husband, Mohamed, rushed Mira to a local hospital:

‘On the way, I sat in the back of the car with Mira,’ recalls Charlotte. ‘She seemed to have perked up a bit and was happily playing with my fingers.’ But as soon as they got to Pembury Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, Mira suddenly stopped breathing.

‘It was like one of those horrendous scenes from Casualty,’ says Charlotte. ‘It all happened so fast, I just remember thinking that all of those doctors who were with her must be able to help her; that somebody there would know what to do.

Four hours later, a grim-faced consultant told them the terrible news. ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face as he told us: “I’m so sorry. We don’t know what’s made Mira so ill, but there’s nothing more we can do for her,” ’ says Charlotte.

The couple were asked if they’d like to hold Mira as her ventilator was switched off. ‘It was horrific. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that she wouldn’t pull through. Now we were being asked to hold her for the last time and say our goodbyes,’ says Charlotte.

The couple went home to mourn and await the results of their daughter’s postmortem reports. Eventually, they were told why it was that their otherwise healthy little girl had deteriorated so quickly:

‘As it was my first ever cold sore, her tiny body was unprotected,’ says Charlotte. ‘If I’d had a cold sore before, I would have developed some sort of immunity to the virus and this would have been passed to Mira through the placenta.

‘Then after the first six weeks or so, Mira would have begun to develop her own immune system. The consultant said to us afterwards that the fact Mira had been breastfed - which boosts babies’ immunity - had helped her to fight off the infection for a little while longer before it overwhelmed her.

‘It was just incredibly bad luck that my first ever infection coincided with the birth, and I unknowingly transmitted the virus to her in the first few days of her life. It could have happened by something as simple as me touching my mouth in my sleep and then picking her up to feed her.

Our mother would feel no qualms about outright telling people to back their asses up when they would lean over us or our little brother back when we were little. Babies are so fragile! We hope that if anything good can come of Mira’s death, its that people remember to always be extra cautious around newborns. Better yet, just give your baby to us.

We hope that, when and if Charlotte and Mohamed decide to have another child, that it is happy and healthy.

Did I kill my baby with a kiss? How an anguished mother didn’t discover the danger of the common cold sore virus until it was too late… [Daily Mail]