Broadcaster Kathryn Thomas has spoken out about her 'terrifying' ordeal with her young child who contracted RSV.
She's working to raise awareness of the virus as new research finds only 51% of parents are aware of RSV and understand its risks.
Some 19% have never heard of RSV and 29% are unsure about the virus or its symptoms, according to data from Empathy Research.
Fewer than half of parents (48%) feel confident in identifying RSV symptoms in their children.
RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) is a common virus that causes coughs and colds, particularly in very young children.
Kathryn told The Pat Kenny Show she began to notice something was off with her daughter Grace when she was three-weeks-old.
She also had an older daughter Ellie (6) who was unaffected.
"Everything was going swimmingly, we had everybody around with cuddles and kisses and we were walking Ellie to school," she said.
"At about three and two days I noticed that she was quite congested [with a] big blocked nose.
"I knew because when I tried to feed her she was pulling herself away from the breast.
"I didn't think anything about it; I thought [it was] a little cold - and because Ellie my eldest wasn't sick, I wasn't too concerned.
"The only thing I knew at that stage as a mother to be panicking about was if the child had a temperature."
'They took her straight in'
About four days later Grace's condition deteriorated.
"The cough started getting worse - very congested, green mucus - she was again not feeding very well," she said.
"I was at the school gate and one of the mothers looked into the buggy and I said, 'I don't want to be clogging up the waiting rooms, it's just a head cold.
"She said, 'If I were you don't be worried about that and off you go.'"
Kathryn took Grace to the Emergency Department at Crumlin Children's Hospital.
"They took her temperature - I had been taking her temperature - and she had a slightly raised temperature," she said.
"They basically took her straight in, they did a spinal lumbar puncture on her.
"They wouldn't let me into the room or advised I didn't go in and they just had to check that it wasn't meningitis.
"Within about an hour they were able to say that she had contracted RSV."
'In hospital for three days'
Kathryn said she was in hospital with Grace for several days.
"They had her on a drip, they had a saline mask on her face pretty consistently," she said.
"They put tubes in her nose to kind of try and clear out the mucus.
"We were in there for three days and the place was full of babies with RSV and I had never heard of it before."
Kathryn said she wishes she had acted sooner.
"You kind of think [it is a] mother's instinct and again a real Irish [approach of] 'I don't want to be bothering anybody, there's people much more serious than me.'
"When I think back on it now, she was so teeny tiny - why didn't I react sooner? Why didn't I act sooner?
"It took somebody else to look into the buggy to tell me to move things along".
'She's just so tiny'
Kathryn said her time in the hospital was 'the most terrifying thing'.
"I look back at photographs of her when we were in the hospital and she's just so tiny and with the tubes in her hands and everything," she said.
"To get a spinal lumbar puncture, I didn't even know what that was.
"They basically took her off me and took her away.
"That all probably happened in 20 minutes, but it was just the most terrifying thing because they're so precious and it was the first time she had been away from me".
RSV usually spreads in winter and early spring.
Most symptoms of RSV are mild, such as a runny nose, coughing and sneezing.
People usually recover within two to three weeks without treatment or the need to see a GP.
But RSV can be serious for:
- babies under 1 year of age
- children aged 1 to 4 years
- children and adults with an underlying lung or heart condition
- people with a weakened immune system
- adults aged 65 years and older
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More information on RSV can be found here
