Pregnant with COVID: convalescence after 85 days of hospitalization | New

(AP):

Paola Gambini arrived at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies by ambulance on July 29, near term pregnancy and diagnosed with COVID-19, breathless.

“I remember the paramedics telling us ‘you called at the right time’ because they immediately put me on oxygen,” she said.

From July 1 to September, around 260 COVID-19 positive pregnant patients were hospitalized at Winnie Palmer, said Dr. Lori Boardman, assistant vice president and head of quality.

AdventHealth’s south-central Florida division also saw an increase in the number of COVID-19 patients during the summer delta wave. It admitted 113 pregnant women with complications from COVID-19 from July 1 to November 11, more than half the number hospitalized throughout the pandemic, said Dr Kathryn Berryman, who specializes in maternal and fetal medicine.

Nationwide, from January 2020 to November 15, 2021, more than 145,000 pregnant Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 24,000 have been hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of November 15, 229 pregnant people with COVID-19 had died.

Pregnant and recently pregnant people are at risk because they have weaker immune systems than the average person, Boardman said.

Growing evidence, though limited, shows that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks to mothers and their babies, according to studies shared by the CDC on its website. In contrast, COVID-19 increases the risk of serious outcomes and premature labor compared to pregnant people without COVID-19, according to an analysis of 77 studies published in September 2020 in the BMJ, a medical research journal. Babies are unlikely to catch COVID-19 from their parents, the CDC has said.

Yet despite the evidence, fewer than four in ten pregnant women between the ages of 18 and 49 were fully vaccinated during or before pregnancy as of November 13, according to CDC data.

“If I had gone back in time and known what I know now, I definitely would have gotten the shot,” Gambini said. “I don’t want other pregnant women to think, ‘I’m a superhero, I’m taking these vitamins… it will be fine, COVID won’t get me’, because that’s exactly what I thought, and it is not true. “

FIGHT AGAINST COVID-19

At first it was just a fever. But about a week after Gambini’s diagnosis, she couldn’t catch her breath, and her fiance, Michael Hazen, called 911. Her lungs were full of fluid.

Doctors performed an emergency Caesarean section so they could better deliver life-saving treatment to the 32-year-old. A girl was born preterm, before the 37th week of pregnancy. They called her Lilliana.

Gambini held Lilliana for a brief moment before her fiance took her, and Gambini was transferred to the Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center. There, a fan was breathing for her; when that wasn’t enough, doctors used an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to pump his blood out of his body and oxygenate it there before putting it back on. The staff told her fiance on several occasions that she might not be able to do it.

“I feel blessed to be gone in one piece… The nurses were telling me… you are one of the lucky ones,” she said.

She held her daughter in her arms once when she was born and once when her medical team arranged a visit for her birthday. Other than this visit, they only interacted on FaceTime.

“I just counted the days,” she said. “I remember they said to me, ‘You’ll be home for Thanksgiving,’ and I remember looking at Michael, and I thought, ‘I’m doing this before Halloween, and I’m going to watch my baby s ‘dress . And I did.

After 85 days, she came home. She dressed Lilliana as a pumpkin.

Gambini has now spent about a month at home with her baby. She is on oxygen and is struggling physically after spending so long in bed; she lost about 80 pounds and her muscles atrophied. Doctors had to give her a partial hysterectomy in the hospital to stop the internal bleeding.

“I planned to have more babies. … I always wanted to be a mom. So for me to wake up and have them say, ‘We have to remove your uterus,’ that was the hardest thing for me to hear, ”she said. “She’s my rainbow baby, my one and only.”

She’s better, however, and her goal is to run out of oxygen by Christmas. She said she wants other people who have spent time in the hospital to know that recovery is possible – but she also hopes other moms and moms-to-be won’t end up there.

FIGHTING BAD INFORMATION

A big obstacle to preventing pregnant women from catching COVID-19 is misinformation about vaccines, Boardman and Berryman said. They urge doctors to continue talking to unvaccinated patients.

“We don’t see any increase in birth defects or things like that because of the comparison of vaccinated women to unvaccinated women,” Boardman said. “I still think some of those concerns stay put, despite talking about what we know, as well as what we don’t know.”

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey released in November found that 17% of Americans believe pregnant women should not receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and 22% are unsure.

State Representative Angela ‘Angie’ Nixon, D-Jacksonville, accuses politicians of spreading lies about COVID-19.

Nixon contracted COVID-19 while she was pregnant. Black and Hispanic pregnant women have the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates and are also at the highest risk for complications during pregnancy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“I know what it was like to fear for your life. Black women are four times more likely to have pregnancy-related issues, besides catching COVID, it’s only getting worse, ”she said. “It’s just too bad they’re politicizing this.”

DeSantis on Thursday signed a law that allows employees of private companies to withdraw from vaccination mandates if they are pregnant or planning to become pregnant. The legislation also imposed several other restrictions on vaccination mandates.

Nixon said the legislation is “ridiculous” because it wrongly implies that vaccination harms pregnant people.

“It was a real slap in the face, especially for pregnant women,” Nixon said. “They are spreading lies.”

Additionally, a page on the Florida Department of Health website differs from the CDC on this issue.

It contains a page on high-risk populations which states that pregnant people “are known to be at risk for serious viral illness”, but “to date data on COVID-19 has not shown an increased risk” . However, it is linked to a CDC statement that states as a “fact” that pregnant or recently pregnant people with COVID-19 are more likely to get seriously ill than non-pregnant people.

The Florida Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment on why it formulates risk differently from the CDC.

As to whether it’s okay for pregnant women to let their guard down now that the summer wave has subsided in Florida, Boardman reminded everyone that the Delta Wave also started after a period of low positivity rates. . She said COVID-19 vaccines and boosters will likely become vital during pregnancy, as flu shots are now.

“(Don’t) let yourself be lulled into a false sense of security and realize this is going to be part of the world we live in, take these precautions to help prevent what happens to these moms,” Boardman said.

Berryman agreed that while COVID-19 cases are low right now, the pandemic will inevitably continue to trend up, then valley, then again, and pregnant women will be particularly vulnerable without vaccination.

“I have yet to find a pregnant patient who has regretted being vaccinated,” Berryman said. “They universally said…“ I’m so glad I got it. ”I only have patients who regret not having received it.