RSV can be serious illness for some babies

Jonas Henderson was born in October, five weeks premature, to a young mother who had endured a difficult, high-risk pregnancy. He spent his first 10 days in neonatal intensive care, and he wasn't home long before he began to show signs of respiratory illness. "He started sounding congested the day after Halloween," says his mother, Crystal Henderson. "He couldn't breathe well, and he was having a hard time eating. The next week he was still sick, and we were back and forth to the doctor's office several times." On Dec. 14, a registered nurse from Nurses for Newborns, Pat Walz, was visiting the Henderson home in Woodson Terrace. Walz noticed that the baby periodically stopped breathing and had begun to turn blue, so she suggested that Henderson call 911. Mother and baby went in an ambulance to DePaul Health Center, which later transferred Jonas to Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center.

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