Jessica

Age at interview: 44

Brief Outline:

One of Jessica’s twin daughters was burnt when she was 18 months old after boiling water accidentally splashed onto her shoulder and face.

Background:

Jessica lives with her husband and their three children. Her ethnicity is White British.

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Jessica’s daughter was 18 months old when she was accidentally scalded with hot water in an accident in the kitchen. Jessica had boiled water to sterilise her twin daughter’s dummies and placed the dummies and water in a small pot on the kitchen worktop. Jessica’s daughter flipped the pot and boiling water splashed onto her shoulder and face.

Jessica and her husband called an ambulance for their daughter. Whilst waiting for the ambulance to arrive, they applied cool, running water to the burns. As they had 2 other children at home, they went to a neighbour to ask for help with childcare. The neighbour took their eldest child to school and looked after their other daughter until help arrived. Jessica and her family lived in a rural area which meant the ambulance took “over half an hour” to arrive.

In addition to the ambulance, an air ambulance helicopter was also dispatched for Jessica’s daughter. However, it was decided that the helicopter would be too “distressing” for Jessica’s daughter due to the noise, so she was taken to hospital in the ambulance instead.

Once they arrived at the hospital, Jessica remembers feeling a sense of shock and finding it hard to think straight. She also found it difficult as this was the first time her twin daughters had been separated, and she worried about how they would manage without each other. Jessica was pleasantly surprised at how well her daughters coped whilst they were separated, she said her other daughter “enjoyed going to the childminders” and managed “much better” than she originally thought she would.

Jessica and her daughter stayed in hospital for 2 days before they were sent home. When they arrived home, Jessica put her daughter to bed but sensed that something “wasn’t right”. In the middle of the night she started to become unwell so they drove back to the hospital. Jessica’s daughter had picked up a strep infection in hospital and needed to stay in hospital for a week, with a further 2 weeks of outpatient appointments every day.

Jessica’s daughter was “afraid of the bath” for a few months after she was burnt. Jessica thinks this is because of the negative associations her daughter held about the bath, such as when running water was applied to her burns after the accident. The bath was introduced again slowly and over time Jessica’s daughter remembered that “being in the bath is a fun thing”. Jessica said it was important that her daughter was allowed to go “at her own pace” as she “absolutely loves the bath again now”.

Jessica’s advice to other parents experiencing similar situations is that “with time it will get easier” and to “be kinder on yourself”.

Jessica’s daughter picked up an infection whilst she was being treated in hospital.

We were only home for less than 12 hours when I realised that something wasn’t right with her. She came home and she went to bed really easily and I thought that was a bit strange, being as she’d been away from home and then in the night she started being sick. One of the things they told me to look out for was about infections and so I drove her back to the hospital that night, in the night, and I got re-admitted in the middle of the night again. She had picked up an infection in hospital and she was very seriously ill then.

The infection caused a sepsis-type reaction in her. So, she then had to have intravenous antibiotics for two weeks every day through a canula. And so, after we came out of hospital, I then had to take her in every day for another week or 10 days, into a hospital that’s 35 minutes from us, to have her injections, her antibiotics every day.

Jessica was worried about how her twin daughters would cope being separated when one of them was burnt and needed to stay in hospital.

It sounds like it was a very uncertain time and the fact that the hospital was an hour away, what was that like for you, the journey there?

It made the whole thing worse in the fact that she is an identical twin, because I had to take her away from her other twin. It’s the first time that they’d ever been separated, so that was quite difficult and because I felt very guilty about the whole situation and, obviously, splitting them was very difficult. I wondered how they would manage without each other. They’d never spent any time apart at all. But actually, they were both fine but, obviously worried when you don’t know how things are going to be and the hospital being an hour away was quite difficult in terms of my husband and my other children being able to visit, although they did come and see us every day after school.

How long did your daughter stay in hospital for?

I think that we were initially in for two days, but they just have to get you sort of settled, get the burns dressed and everything and get you to a point where they can then send you home. I think it was two days, but we were only home for less than 12 hours when I realised that something wasn’t right with her. So, then we had to make the decision about who was going to take her back, what we were going to do, again because we had to go back to the hospital that was an hour away. But we found it was better that, even though I was tired, that I took her still, because we thought I’d have to stay longer, and also, because I had to go in the night, I had to leave my children again and, obviously, they didn’t know where we had gone when they woke up.

Jessica hopes that speaking to her daughter about scars will help her to realise that they are normal and everyone has them.

I mean, at the moment we, you know, obviously because we are still putting creams and things on them, we talk about them being scars and we try and normalise it. You know, we talk about the scars that everyone else in the family has from like falling over or my son broke his wrist one and he has a scar from the operation and I have a scar on my knee when I was younger and we talk about scars in general to try and make her understand that it’s just normal, everyone has scars in some way, on them, and that’s how I hope that she’ll be able to view that as she’s older.

Not something really different. Everybody has a scar, so that if people do ask her about it, she can say “I had an accident when I was young and that’s a scar”. Just like my son shows his scar from when he broke his arm.

It took Jessica’s daughter a long time to feel comfortable in the bath again after she was burnt.

My daughter was afraid of the bath after the incident, so it took a long time to get her back into a bath, which I don’t know if that was because we put her in the bath after the burn or due to the washings, she obviously had negative associations with the bath. But that lady that came out helped me to, helped me to sort of wash her, like just work out other ways that we could wash her and start to get her back into the water.

We had to just introduce the bath again really slowly. So she would watch her sister have a bath and be in the same room and then, we let her stand in the bath, and then we said that she could go in and come out if she wanted to, just give it a try. And just over time she allowed us to put her in and then I think she started to remember that it’s a fun, being in the bath is a fun thing. And luckily, I think having her sister there as well helped her then to just start going in. So sometimes she would go in but then she would ask to come out and I’d just take her straight out when she asked and not force her to do anything until she was ready.

She absolutely loves the bath again now, which is great, because it took a lot of months to get her into the bath again.

In time, Jessica was able to accept that accidents happen.

In time, I had to accept that accidents can happen. And at first, I couldn’t sort of entertain that thought. But over time, I’ve had to sort of accept that that is the case and try and view it more that way.

I think you have to learn to be a bit kinder to yourself, because that’s what people did say to me, you know, “If this happened to me, you wouldn’t be judging me, would you?”. And I’d say “No.” And then, in time, you know, like my daughter has had another accident since – minor – she tripped and broke a tooth when she was running, and I had to try and view it more as an accident rather than something that I had done.

Jessica told us that her confidence as a parent was knocked after her daughter was burnt.

I found it awful at the beginning. Didn’t want to see anybody, but obviously I had to because I had to go back on the school run and see people. I found it very hard to talk to anyone about it. Felt just so guilty all the time. Yeah, I didn’t really want to speak to people and then, if people wanted to speak to me, I just used to find that awful, even though they were trying to be nice. Going back to the hospital was very traumatic each time for me and for my daughter I think, just for the normal check-ups. It just used to sort of bring it all back each time. But that did slowly get better. Again, it’s just sort of time. Just the time thing, just learning to accept it as an accident. Took me a long time to do that.

When it first happened, I really lost confidence in myself as a parent because before then I always thought I was quite a good parent. But it just really knocked my confidence for a long time. I’ve never been through a traumatic experience before so, it was the first time I’ve had to deal with those sorts of emotions. And that I did find it quite hard to come to terms with. But, over time it does get easier.