Megan Sites Celina Ohio 7 month pregnant woman put in induced coma after contracting COVID-19 gives birth to premature baby boy.
An Ohio woman who was diagnosed with COVID-19 and placed in a medically-induced coma still does not know that she gave birth to a baby boy last week.
Megan Michelle Sites, a 27-year-old Celina-based nurse, gave birth to the newborn after doctors performed the emergency c-section on her, on April 9.
‘She doesn’t know that she had her baby, and her baby was delivered at 29 weeks,’ her sister-in-law, Kacie Jeffries, explained to WDTN.
Her battle started on March 27 with a cold and fever, he said to WHIO.
Megan, described as being healthy and non-smoking, first tested for the virus after slowly developing the normal symptoms associated with COVID-19.
Sites’ condition worsened within 24 hours and her health continued to decline once she was transported to hospital.
Life or death decision made to medically induce mother to save unborn child:
According to her brother, Shaun Jeffries, Megan came down with the virus within the span of ’24 hours’ time.
Shaun said that his sister was very much aware of how dangerous the virus was.
‘She was crying to my mom, saying she doesn’t want to die,’ the brother stated. ‘That right there tells you she knew enough and what she was going through.’
Her condition quickly grew worse, Kacie explained.
She said: ‘Her lungs were just failing. In order to save her and her baby, they had to do an emergency C-section.’
A decision was to made to sedate the seven month pregnant woman artificially via an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (ECMO). The ECMO machine oxygenates the blood by pumping it out of the body, through an artificial lung, and then back in.
‘By then they’re saying that’s the last thing. That’s the last thing we can try and do,’ Shaun shared.
Pregnant woman forced to deal with the realities of COVID-19:
Megan is now on a ventilator. Her premature baby boy, weighed 3 pounds, 9 ounces when he was delivered. The newborn child has been tested for the virus twice and has tested negative each time. The boy remains in the NICU.
Her husband, Donny Sites, was finally able to hold the baby three days after it was born.
‘Never in a million years would we have thought our 27-year-old sister would be infected with this virus and almost lose her life. People have got to take this seriously.’
Both mother and son have been improving lately, with Megan having recently come off the ECMO machine, with the goal to get her off the ventilator as well. The newborn’s father recently finished self quarantine and was able to hold Buddy for the first time.
The newborn has not been given a name as the family is hoping Megan will recover.
A GoFundme page for Michelle has to date raised $33, 096 of a $1,000 goal.
Studies show, at least, that infants born to mothers with an infection to coronavirus seemed free of the virus and appeared healthy at birth. This was according to a study conducted on nine pregnant women and their babies, which was published in February in The Lancet.
