However, they can't decide which antibiotic to discontinue because they both cause kidney damage and they still don‘t know what disease they have. The antibiotics are shutting down the babies' kidneys. She admonishes a student for letting his tie flop around over all the surfaces, spreading any possible infection. Cameron tells Foreman it's easier to die than to watch someone die and defends her habit of not being completely honest with people about the conditions of their loved ones.Ĭuddy is still looking for the infection by swabbing surfaces. One of his moms says she had a cold while she was pregnant, but Cameron rules it out because the child was healthy at birth.įoreman challenges Cameron about not being up front with the parents. Cameron tells the mothers of Baby Boy Chen-Lupino that their baby is sick, but Foreman has to step in to tell them how bad it is. They do an MRI on the babies, but find nothing. House orders two powerful narrow spectrum antibiotics, vancomycin and aztreonam, for the two most likely resistant bacteria.
House starts to think what the disease might be. Cuddy goes to build a team to swab surfaces for infections. They can't find anything they have in common. There are now four sick babies, and they are getting worse - rising fever and blood pressure dropping to the point where they are unlikely to last for a day if it keeps up. Cuddy moves the babies with a fever to isolation and starts directing women in labor to Princeton General. However, House finds another sick baby on another floor with the same symptoms. They go to look at all the other babies in the maternity ward. However, Cuddy says two sick babies don't prove an epidemic. Cuddy thinks the other doctors are right but House is standing by his opinion and says they have an epidemic. House goes to Cuddy to ask the two patients be put in isolation. Wilson thinks they have unrelated diseases. He goes to intensive care and finds two babies with similar symptoms, although the first has been diagnosed with a bowel obstruction and the second with a high fever. Lim and another doctor start talking about the fact their newborn patients both had a seizure although they were both healthy at birth. House is watching a medical drama in the obstetricians' lounge when Dr. They call the obstetrician to examine her, and he realizes the baby is having a seizure.
The parents of a newborn are discussing what to call her when the baby starts spitting up, even though she hasn't eaten.
It's only revealed later in the series who that person is and how it further complicates her character. Later, we learn that House has a history of looking for zebras when all that's there is a horse and making the patient suffer for it.Īs for the development of other characters, Cameron is put front and center here and House figures out that she has lost someone to illness. It's also the first episode to bring up another issue that was later explored in All In, Kids and Meaning - House seeing a medical mystery that no-one else sees and everyone else believing House has seen something that's not there. It is also the first episode of the series to involve the death of a primary patient, one of the infants. This episode, the fourth in the series, is the first to break away from what has always seemed to be the standard format of "patient of the week". 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. Cuddy dismisses the suggestion until other babies show up with the same symptoms. When a newborn has a seizure and another newborn becomes ill, House believes an epidemic is spreading through the hospital. Maternity is a 1st season episode of House which first aired on December 7, 2004. Just give those poor women a few hours of hope." - Maternity It’s about getting them prepared for the likely death of their child!" Cameron: " If their son dies tomorrow, you think they’ll give a damn what I said to them today? It’s not going to matter, they’re not going to care, nothing’s going to be the same ever again. Cameron: " So now it’s about worrying about them yelling at us?" Wilson: " No.