Does she have a Urinary Tract Infection?

Can you try to do a clean catch with her so they don’t have to do the catheter? When she first gets up in the morning, put her in an empty tub and run warm water over her hands and get something big enough to catch…. It may not be a true clean catch, but may give them what they need. Maybe pick up one of the collection cups from them so that you can put it right in and drop it off?

I think UTI’s are common in young girls regardless of hygene. My nieces would get them when they were young but not anymore.

In Aus they also have little bags you can attach. Its not entirely clean but still a cathater is pretty invasive. They aspirated Urine from Alana’s bladder with a huge syringe at 8 weeks. In hindsight I would never let them do that again. They dipsticked her urine before that which they caught in the bag and it showed up lots of stuff, enough for me to be OK about them giving antibiotics. Really, the antibiotics aren’t going to do any harm, so why go to invasive techniques. They don’t cathertarise us after all!!!!

The only other thing, is she red down there…could she have a bit of a rash? Any discharge on her nappy?

They have those little bags that Therese mentioned here too. I had to use one for Liza once. I would not allow them to catheterize her if you can get around it. I’d try the bag first. If that’s negative you can assume she probably does not have an infection. If it’s positive they may say, well let us do a catheter to get a “pure” sample to be sure. I’d say, no way, let’s just put her on antibiotics. This happened twice with Liza. She was squatting and crying so I think it burned when she urinated. The first time I refused the catheter they let her have antibiotics based on the bag collection being positive and the antibiotics worked and she got better.

Another time we had this nurse practitioner who I despise and she insisted on catheterizing Liza. I was very against it but felt pressured and allowed it. I could have kicked myself because the test came back negative but a week later she was crying when she urinated and we did the bag test this time and she had a UTI. Catheters can cause UTI’s. I knew that and that’s what I was afraid of.

Good luck. I hope your ped work with you on this. Keep us posted.

It makes me so mad when they don’t tell you these things. I had so many of these maddening experiences with Liza that I learned to research everything before allowing anything to be done to my child. One time when Liza was an infant they said one of her hips may have been out of alignment so I better have it X-rayed. I was leery because she’d already had too many needless x-rays for other stupid things which turned out to be nothing, but I agreed and they x-rayed her with no protection for her ovaries because they needed to see her hips. A few hours later I get a phone call from the doc and he said that the results are “inconclusive” because the bones are not yet fully developed or calcified or something like that (and that this was typical at her age) so she’d have to be x-rayed again later on.

You might be able to get one of the collection bags from the pharmacist. I would probably collect and take it in as Christine suggested and get it dipsticked by the nurse (would they do that over there without a drs appt…they do here). Just to set your mind at ease?

I wouldn’t wait for a fever though…by that time any UTI would be systemic and could be affecting the kidney’s.

My understanding is that if the UTI is a localised infection it doesn’t cause a fever as such at least initially. You know something nasty sneaking up the Urinary tract to cause an infection somewhere. This is the most common cause of UTI . But if it is left untreated and the infection might spread through the blood stream.

For younger infants I was told that the UTI is often a bug thats in the blood stream, like ecoli, causing the UTI and so it is systemic. You then get the fever and potential damage to other organs (Alana had to have ultrasound to check). In infants it can also result from bladder to kidney reflux…a whole other story but that causes reccurent UTI’s). Or somthing like that.

So not to be scary but I will always get the urine checked if I’m worried now, because by the time the fever is up the infection is full blown.

The problem they say with the bag collection is that if the urine touches the skin it could pick up some nasty bug thats just hanging around outside but isn’t present inside. Therefore the bag is a good screener for the lack of a UTI… if it is negative it is very unlikely there is a UTI. If it was positive I would try for a “clean catch”- peeing into a sterile dish or something prior to anything invasive.

You know I have never had a symptomatic UTI before…that is a hurting one, I usually just get really tired and run down and they test my urine and there are nasties in there!!!