‘Docs said I would have lost my baby boy to meningitis if he’d been diagnosed a few hours later’

AS soon as ­Britain’s Got Talent singer Becky O’Brien realised her baby son wasn’t well, she knew it was something serious.

And that mother’s instinct saved his life — because little Toby had deadly meningitis.
When Becky, 36, rang her GP for an appointment she was told he couldn’t be seen until the next day.

But she insisted and ­managed to get an urgent slot later that same day — which is why Toby is still here.

Doctors diagnosed the killer brain bug and told her that if he had been left without treatment for even a few more hours, he would not have made it.

Last year’s BGT semi- finalist, who lives in London with Toby, now six, and his twin sister Chloe, says: “It was touch and go for Toby — the doctors said there was a chance he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital.

Becky, who is supporting the Meningitis Research ­Foundation, noticed something was wrong with her son in July 2010, when he was just five months old.

He and Chloe had been born prematurely at 29 weeks at Luton Hospital in February that year. It was two months before the tiny pair were allowed home.

Three months later Becky went to pick her precious boy up out of his cot and noticed he was floppy and his eyes were staring.

Even though he had no signs of a rash, one of the condition’s classic signs, she feared the worst.

She recalls: “He wasn’t himself at all, and I was worried about how vacant his eyes seemed to be. So I took his temperature and it was sky-high. I rang the ­surgery but they told me there wasn’t an appointment until the next day.

“I pleaded with them to see him and, eventually, they agreed so I raced him down to the doctors surgery.

“When I got there, the doctor put a stethoscope on his chest and said to me that he needed to go to hospital in an ambulance straight away.

“I was so shocked. They put an oxygen mask on him and he was rushed to Northampton General Hospital where he was put on an antibiotic drip and a machine to help him breathe.

“It was terrifying to see him. He was so tiny yet he was surrounded by tubes and wires.” He was diagnosed with pneumococcal meningitis — inflammation of the brain’s membrane caused by bacteria.

He spent two weeks fighting for his life at the hospital before suffering a major fit and being transferred to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

There, doctors paralysed his body to try to give him a chance to recover. He was put in the intensive care unit — where Becky was asked if she wanted a priest to come and give him the last rites.
She says: “I was devastated. I thought I was going to lose him. I was preparing myself for the worst.”
But two days later Toby started to turn a corner.

The singer said: “It was a ray of hope for us. Slowly, as each day passed, he started to get stronger. I couldn’t believe that he had fought through all that.”

After two months in hospital Toby was finally allowed home. At a year old, doctors feared he may have developed cerebral palsy as a result of the infection, but he continued improving.

He had two years of physiotherapy and by last year, aged five, he was fully recovered.
Becky says: “It has been such a long road. It was only 12 months ago that he was able to run and jump again for the first time.

“I’d urge parents to be vigilant for signs of meningitis, and to know that there isn’t always a rash. Often it’s too late when the rash appears.

“Being aware of the early signs can mean the difference between life and death.