Woman celebrates first Mother’s Day after giving birth while in a coma

This past weekend was an incredibly special one for mothers around the globe. It was, however, even more special for mothers celebrating it for the first time. For Serena Torres, celebrating her first Mother’s Day was even more important because she never knew if she was going to live to see it.

The 29-year-old from New York spent four months in hospital as she battled the coronavirus – including two months in the intensive care unit as a result of heart, lung, and kidney failure.

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Serena was diagnosed with the virus when she was six months pregnant, which she believed she contracted from her husband who was exposed to it at his job. "It was a really scary and emotional point because there were so many unknowns," she said in an interview with ABC News. "At first I didn't think that COVID was going to hit me as hard as it did because I don't have a complicated medical history."

"I was 28 at the time. I worked out every day at the gym," she told Good Morning America. "I didn't think I would be as affected as I was."

Serena explains that she was first hospitalised at her local hospital before she was transferred to Westchester Medical Center on 20 October last year. There, she was kept alive by a ventilator and then an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine. This machine removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends back blood with oxygen to the body, allowing the heart and lungs time to rest and heal.

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Serena was put in a medically-induced coma and doctors were forced to perform an emergency caesarean section to deliver her baby girl Alessandra. The baby spent one month in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit because she was born premature.

     

After testing for the virus, Alessandra, luckily, tested negative, but did test positive for antibodies.

"My health really declined after the C-section, so basically I had been staying alive for her," said Torres. "I don't remember this account but many nurses told me that there was one moment when I woke up from the sedation and I rocked my arm like I was trying to rock a baby, but I couldn't communicate. It was like I was asking, 'Where is my baby?'"

Serena’s health took a turn for the better in November last year and, around the same time, Alessandra was discharged from the hospital’s NICU.

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After waking up from her coma, Serena relied on her husband and nurses to see her baby through video calls. Her husband then made her a photo album and nurses laminated a photograph so that she could keep an image of her child next to her bed.

Serena then spent a further three months in hospital where she started regaining her strength and recovering from other complications. These included blood clots that required all her toes to be amputated.

Then, in mid-February, Serena was able to hold her daughter for the first time. "I will never forget that day in my life. I just started to do the ugly cry, when you're so happy that you don't even care," Serena says. "She just looked at me, holding my finger. You wait so long. Every single day you're fighting, fighting for that moment, and when that moment comes, you just can't explain it.”

This is why this Mother’s Day was an extremely special one for Serena and Alessandra. "I didn't get to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's so we [celebrated] this Mother's Day like it's all the holidays combined. [Mother's Day] to me feels like most important because, right now, Alessandra has a mom here and that means the world," she added. "I fought so hard to be a mom and to be here home with her."

Image courtesy: Serena Torres