A woman was left wondering whether her husband cheated on her whilst she was pregnant when a medic wrongly diagnosed her newborn with an STI. Jenna Barnes, 43, took her newborn baby boy, Fletcher, to hospital for a check up when his eyes became "gunky and stuck together".
He underwent tests to determine what was causing the issue. Jenna claims a midwife thentold her the tot had tested positive for sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea.
Jenna says she was told the infection would have been passed on by a parent before the tot was born. This left her wondering whether husband, Chris, 45, the frontman for a tribute rock band, had cheated on her.
Knowing she had been faithful and wouldn't have contracted gonorrhoea from anyone else, Jenna confronted Chris - who insisted he hadn't strayed either. Thankfully a flustered midwife revealed they'd given Jenna the wrong results - and Fletcher did not have gonorrhoea.
She discovered the little boy had a bacterial infection instead and he was treated with antibiotics and eye drops. The midwife was very apologetic for mistakenly reading out positive instead of negative and Jenna says she and Chris can laugh about the blunder now.
Jenna, a lingerie and costume designer, from Manchester, said: "The midwife asked: ‘Have you been tested?' and I said: 'For what?'
"She told me: 'It’s coming up that your baby has gonorrhoea.' I was gobsmacked when she told me - I was lost for words.
"I instantly started Googling the illness and knew having sex was the only way of contracting the disease. Chris and I were relieved when we discovered it was an honest mistake, but in our heart of hearts we knew it was wrong."
Fletcher's poorly eyes were down to a common bacterial infection. Jenna gave birth to the tot on 30th August 2022 at 5.40am and he weighed 7lbs 9oz.
The newborn started experiencing symptoms of an eye infection when he was just one day old. After four days, her midwife recommended she called 111 to get an out-of-hours GP appointment.
Due to Fletcher's young age, the GP didn’t want to prescribe antibiotics and recommended she rubbed breastmilk on his eyes with cotton wool pads - before sending her back to the hospital for tests, where they swabbed Fletcher's eyes.
The mum-of-five said: "They swabbed his eyes and told me they would call me back with the results." She received the results of the test the same day via telephone and, to her shock, they revealed he had gonorrhoea - meaning either Jenna or Chris had contracted the disease and passed it onto Fletcher.
Jenna frantically started trawling Google for answers and wondered if it were possible to contract the infection from toilet seats, or through any means other than sex. “I have complete trust in my husband but when a medical professional tells you have tested positive for an STI, you don’t question it," she said.
Luckily, Jenna already had a meeting with the same midwife later the day so it was only a few hours before she could query the midwife. Jenna’s husband, Chris, was on tour in Canada at the time of his baby’s birth.
Jenna said: "Strangers always grill me and ask how I cope with Chris being in a band and on tour where there's so much temptation. Up until that moment, I had never doubted his loyalty once.
"I still trusted him 100% but did start to think what on earth had gone on." Jenna had to text Chris - as she didn’t want to phone and wake the whole tour bus - and asked if they could talk.
After revealing the diagnosis on the phone, she said Chris responded: “How the f**k has that happened?”
“I know you’ve not done anything, you’re at home with five kids.”
Even their son, George, 13, said: “You know dad would never cheat, he won’t even go to a strip club.” Jenna added: "Chris is more into tea and slippers than coke and strippers."
Jenna started worrying Chris would think she had been unfaithful when she spent nine weeks working at Pinewood Studios, Slough, Berkshire, before becoming pregnant with Fletcher in December 2021. She even pleaded with Chris and said: “Look if you have been unfaithful, I don’t mind, I just need to know the truth.”
She added: “As soul mates I’d like to think we would work through infidelity together.” The couple had both calmed down and talked it through - they came to the conclusion it must have been a mistake as neither had slept with anyone else.
Luckily, the same midwife was set to visit Jenna at home later that day and she enquired again about the diagnosis. The midwife looked at the system on her laptop to double-check the result.
"She said: 'Oh no I’m sorry, I read it out as positive instead of negative," Jenna said. "I was relieved and I wasn't angry at all, but that's because I'm the most laid back person, Chris and I both are. Chris was also relieved and his whole tour bus had been teasing him about the saga."
Fletcher’s infection was caused by bacteria commonly carried by baby’s and cleared up within 10 days with antibiotics and eye drops. Jenna said: “I was relieved for myself, my husband but most of all our baby.
“I was so worried because I had read online gonorrhoea can cause blindness. I’m such a chilled out person so the midwife was lucky she had done it to me and not somebody else.”
Chris said: "I am admittedly the most boring man in rock 'n' roll. I'm a vegetarian, I barely drink, and I don't smoke.
"I was going to the toilet on the tour bus, it must have been about 3am and I got a text from Jenna saying: 'Why have I got the clap?' We spoke on the phone, and I thought 'how on earth has this even happened?'.
"I was confused but I never doubted Jenna's innocence. I was worried she would think I had been out liaising with the ladies, but everyone who knows me knows it's not in my nature.
"After the initial shock we knew it must have been a mistake and that somebody had got the paperwork wrong and that was confirmed by the midwife later on. Everyone on tour was laughing because it was me this happened to - one who is up first and in bed first.
"We saw the funny side of it and bang our drums for the NHS. They're only human and everyone makes mistakes."
East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: "ELHT are extremely apologetic for the oversight, sharing the incorrect result primarily although promptly rectified. This was a case of human error.
"We are glad mother and infant are both thriving and send them our best wishes for the future."
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