
1. “If it crossed the placenta, he would have died.” Mum’s warning after contracting listeria while pregnant, amid rockmelon contamination.
“It slowly creeps up on you. I started shaking, my temperature was high, it felt like I was having a spasm. I started vomiting on the day I was rushed to hospital.”
Sydney mum Amelia Liddy-Sudbury has a warning for pregnant mothers amid the current listeria outbreak: don’t take any chances.
She was 33 weeks pregnant with her son, Theodore, last year when she ate pre-cut melon, which she now believes was contaminated with listeria – the same source as the current outbreak.
Two people have died from a listeria outbreak linked to rockmelon:
For two weeks, doctors treated Liddy-Sudbury hoping the infection would not move past the placenta and into the womb, as listeria would prove fatal for little Theodore.
They were scared to deliver Theodore while his mother’s health was so compromised. But, at 35 weeks they could wait no longer and Theodore was delivered via emergency cesarean.
“We were within one hour of the bacteria passing through the placenta into the baby,” Liddy-Sudbury told Daily Mail. “If it crossed, he would have died.”
The 36-year-old mother said the onset of her symptoms was gradual.