More than one month after giving birth while in a coma, Blanca Rodriguez was finally able to meet her daughter, Jade.
The stay-at-home mom was 28 weeks pregnant when she tested positive for the novel coronavirus. "My prayers were if God was hearing us to save my baby and me," she said in a video recorded by the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, according to ABC7.
Rodriugez’s condition worsened and she began struggling to breathe, putting the unborn baby at risk, her doctor Kanawatjeet Maken said.
"During the seven days that I had her, there were lots of moments where I thought I had almost lost her," Maken, an internal medicine specialist, said in the video.
"At this point she is not oxygenating and we have to do something to fix it," another doctor, Courtney Martin, added.
Rodriguez went into a coma and required 30 doctors in the operating room to deliver her baby via caesarean section.
Days later, she awoke to learn that her baby had been born. More than a month after the birth, she was able to reunite with Jade, touching the infant through an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit.
"I am grateful they could do all they could do. It is a miracle. It is a blessing,” Rodriguez said.
Baby Jade will still need more time to develop, but Rodriguez told NBC she hopes to bring her home in October. "I'm counting those days,” she shared.
Rodriguez and her doctors at the Loma Linda Medical Center said they hoped sharing her story will prompt others to take the ongoing pandemic more seriously.
"The women who are pregnant — and their unborn babies are innocent bystanders to the pandemic doctors hope Rodriguez' story reminds people the pandemic is still very much a threat," Martin told NBC.
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