Unvaccinated Mom With COVID-19 Gives Birth To Baby With Brain Hemorrhage, Cerebral Palsy

A British woman who contracted COVID-19 while she was expecting a child is now urging others to get vaccinated after she said her infection “destroyed” her pregnancy.

Stacey Jones was unvaccinated when she was rushed to the operating theater on July 29, 2021, and delivered her daughter, Sienna Rita Elizabeth Dennett, via an emergency cesarean section, the Daily Mail reported.

The child, who was born three months before her expected due date, weighed just 1.9 pounds and was given a 60% chance of survival, according to the outlet. The average weight of a full-term female baby is 7.2 pounds.

Jones and her husband, Greg Dennett, contracted COVID-19 at the same time, and in accordance with the hospital's rules, the former was only able to see Sienna for the first time three days after giving birth.

The couple was then reportedly told that their newborn will face motoring issues on the left-hand side of her body as she suffered trauma while she was in the womb and had grade four brain hemorrhage, according to Jones.

"Doctors told me COVID gave my placenta a virus, therefore Sienna wasn't getting everything she needed from it," the mother explained.

"They said her outcome will be cerebral palsy and learning difficulties," she said.

Sienna later had her first brain surgery when she was just 2 weeks old. She needed to be 5.5 pounds for her second ventriculoperitoneal shunt surgery and had to have the fluid inside her brain drained every day using a system called an Ommaya reservoir.

Jones, Dennett and their 3-year-old firstborn, Stanley, ended up spending a total of 79 days in Derriford Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Sienna, now 8 months old, is hitting her milestones, but her cerebral palsy is reportedly starting to kick in as her left arm is becoming stiff.

Despite her condition, Jones still tries to give her child a "normal life" and often takes her to physio, swimming and sensory classes.

The mother, who received her COVID-19 jabs after being discharged from the hospital, is now urging others to get vaccinated.

"It’s such a serious thing that it has to be taken way more seriously," Jones was quoted as saying by PlymouthLive.

"It's not just a cold or the flu; it broke my family in half and it destroyed my pregnancy," she said of her COVID-19 infection.

She claimed that "many people" around her who were pregnant at the time of her ordeal got vaccinated "because it frightened the life out of them and they went on to have healthy pregnancies and babies."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant now or those who might become pregnant in the future get the COVID-19 vaccine.

"Evidence continues to build showing that COVID-19 vaccination before and during pregnancy is safe and effective. It suggests that the benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine outweigh any known or potential risks of vaccination during pregnancy," the agency said.

Dennett has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the Keep Me Close charity, which reportedly supported him and Jones while Sienna was hospitalized. The campaign has gone past its initial £3,000 ($3,910) goal and gathered £3,065 ($3,995) in donations as of writing.

The U.K. has reported a total of 21,747,638 COVID-19 cases and 188,991 virus-related deaths, according to publicly available government data.