CORONAVIRUS
New mother issues plea after being hospitalized with COVID-19 while pregnant
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah woman shared a deeply personal story with KSL-TV about delivering her first child after being hospitalized with COVID-19.
The mother and child are both out of the hospital, but she’s left coping with what the virus stole from her.
Grayson Bakes said she contracted COVID-19 at 32-weeks pregnant.
Next thing she knew, she was at the emergency room.
By the end of the day, her son was delivered via C-section, and she remembers almost nothing until 12 days later.
“I don’t even remember I had a C-section,” said Bakes.
Five weeks after having her son, she still struggles.
“It’s a day-to-day thing. It’s hard. I’m still processing it,” said Bakes. “I’ve had to start going to therapy.”
Her actual due date was Monday, but doctors did an emergency C-section the day she was admitted to the hospital with the Delta variant in early August.
“It’s absolutely insane. You don’t realize how sick you really are until you’re at the point, which is absolutely terrifying,” said Bakes.
It wasn’t until July 31 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave an official recommendation for pregnant women to get the COVID-19 vaccine. But by that time, Bakes was in trouble.
Now, weeks later, she’s had a lot of time to think.
“I’m absolutely angry. Everybody makes COVID so political and it’s not; it’s a disease, it’s absolutely a disease,” said Bakes. “And the reason it’s gotten so bad is because people have made it this political thing and have said, ‘It’s a hoax, it’s not real,’ when it’s absolutely real.”
For Bakes, it stole her chance to experience childbirth.
“Which I hate because I had a birth plan in place,” she said. “I had that taken away from me.”
They’re experiences she will never get back.
“I missed out on firsts — being able to change his first diaper, give him his first bath, so many things,” said an emotional Bakes. “It hurts, really hurts.”
Her request now: she wants people to mask up and get vaccinated.
“I have thought about it a lot. Mass vaccinations aren’t anything new. Ever since like, I don’t know, the 50s, vaccinations have been required to go to schools and universities, even like the flu vaccine. It is nothing new, it really isn’t,” she said.
