Maternity and Newborns

When a newborn has a seizure and another newborn becomes ill, House believes an epidemic is spreading through the hospital. Cuddy dismisses the suggestion until other babies show up with the same symptoms. House and his team race against time to diagnose the illness, but the choices they have to make may be lethal to some of the newborns if their diagnosis is incorrect. Now, obviously the mother of these newborns thinks that they have done something wrong while carrying their unborn child. It is now House and the staff job to assure the parents that it was nothing that they could have done to prevent this illness from occurring. Meanwhile, he has to now prove his theory that the hospital has an epidemic.

House is diagnosing the problems with other staff doctors they have different opinions of the symptoms that the newborns are having. Although there are only two newborns so far delivered; at birth were perfectly fine, but both have had seizures. The first newborn was diagnosed with a bowel obstruction and the second with an undiagnosed fever. House thinks that it is a contagious infection, but has yet to prove his theory. Another staff doctor thinks they have unrelated diseases, but House has an explanation for what differences that they do have and he thinks the obstruction is just air. House is standing by his opinion and asked that the babies be put in isolation until they discover if there is an epidemic at the hospital.

House is now confronted with having to tell these parents how sick these newborns are. The parents are being told to prepare for the worst possibility. One of the parents snaps back at a staff member with angered trying to cope with the fact that her baby might die. Another one of the parents now explains that she’s afraid her marriage might breakup if the child dies. This doctor now has to turn on the psychological part of our medical field and tell the parent not to get ahead of herself. At this point, one of the babies goes into distress (cardiac arrest). House and his team work hard, but can’t get the heart beating again. House calls off the code blue and calls time of death. Despite all the conflict House and staff members have to still work together to diagnosis these babies and keep the parents of these newborns calm and explain what is going on.

The hospital finally agrees with house that it is an epidemic. It took all of four babies before they came to this conclusion. Now they