Woman who gave birth during Covid coma urging pregnant women to get vaccinated

A new mum is urging pregnant women to get their Covid vaccinations – after she was forced to give birth to her son in an induced coma after contracting the virus.

Chelsie King, 27, of Weston-super-Mare, fell pregnant with her son Raphael in January this year, but in July she caught Covid.

She decided not to have her vaccination as at that point its effects on pregnant women were not known.

But unfortunately, when Chelsie was around six months pregnant, she started to feel unwell, Somerset Live reports.

“It was mainly sickness,” she said. “And I had been suffering from that throughout my pregnancy.

“I had no loss of taste or a cough and had no reason to think it was Covid.”

After three days of being unable to even keep water down, Chelsie called her medical team who advised her to go for a PCR test.

“They told me that it was becoming more evident that continuing sickness in pregnant women was a symptom of Covid,” she said.

Chelsie took a test and the next day learned that it had come back positive.

“That’s when my temperature started to soar and I became breathless,” she said.

After becoming increasingly unwell, Chelsie’s husband Patrick, 32, called St Michael’s Hospital in Bristol for advice.

Chelsie then went to St Michael’s Hospital where she and the baby were checked over.

“I hadn’t eaten in a week,” she said. “We were so worried about the baby.

“Thankfully the baby was ok but I was very poorly and I got transferred straight to the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI).

“My oxygen levels were dropping rapidly.”

Within three hours, Chelsie was transferred to intensive care.

Just days later, the ward phoned Patrick and told him that Chelsie’s condition was so critical that they would have to induce his wife and deliver the baby by C-section so she would have a better chance of recovery.

“The last thing I can remember was watching the Euro football finals on my phone from my ITU bed,” she said.

“By midnight on Tuesday I was so critical they decided to deliver him.

“They had to put me into a coma as they needed to put me on a ventilator to get my oxygen levels up.”

Little Raphael was born at 2am on Wednesday, July 14, 12 weeks and one day early, weighing just 2lbs 4 oz.

He was taken immediately to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit ( NICU) at Southmead Hospital – leaving Chelsie unable to realise the dream of holding her newborn.

The ITU team tried to wake Chelsie up after five weeks.

“But every time they did, I picked up another infection,” said Chelsie. “And the ventilator was not working anymore.

“What made it worse was my husband also contracted Covid so couldn’t come in to see me or his newborn son for the first days of his life.”