Andrew feared Sarah was going to die and that he would be raising their daughter on his own. The Mays family with their dog, Porter outside their log home in Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon. When the virus struck them, they struggled with guilt and deep regrets. So, putting off a vaccine seemed like the simplest choice. On top of confusing messages, Sarah hated needles. Sarah’s mother opposed the vaccine and her pregnant midwife (who didn’t work for UCHealth) told Sarah she wasn’t getting vaccinated.
Andrew’s mom and sister were begging the couple to get vaccinated. They hadn’t opposed COVID-19 vaccines but felt like they were getting conflicting advice. Neither Sarah nor Andrew, also 32, had been vaccinated. Then everything fell apart.Ī COVID-19 infection that Andrew had gotten through work over the summer passed to Sarah in early August when she was just over 6 months pregnant.
Their golden retriever puppy, Porter, joined the family a year earlier and, now their daughter would be arriving soon.Įverything seemed perfect. They went fishing, hiking and skiing every chance they got. A year earlier, they bought their dream home, a charming log cabin yards from a river in a beautiful canyon just outside of a town with a perfect name: Loveland. They had been together 16 years and married for four.
The couple met when they were juniors in high school back in Michigan. I’m going to be raising a baby by myself.’ Your whole life is over, just like that.” COVID-19 extremely dangerous during pregnancy, but only one-third of pregnant patients are vaccinated “I thought to myself, ‘I’m not getting my wife back. Tran’s warnings devastated Andrew, but confirmed fears that had been gnawing at him.Įspecially when he was alone at night, he felt like all of his dreams were crumbling. But no one could promise that Sarah, 32, would survive. The team felt confident that they could save the baby. and around the world to use ECMO for pregnant COVID-19 patients. And, it’s exceedingly rare for doctors in the U.S. He explained that ECMO (which stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) doesn’t always work for critically ill COVID-19 patients. Tim Tran, an anesthesiologist and cardiothoracic critical care specialist who was overseeing Sarah’s care in the ICU, had to go over the worst-case scenarios. No one sugarcoated how precarious things were.ĭr. Sarah’s husband, Andrew Mays, returned to the hospital after a fitful night at a hotel across the street to find that Sarah’s condition had gone “down, down, down” that morning. 18 to gather nearly two dozen medical experts to carefully orchestrate back-to-back surgeries: first connecting Sarah to ECMO, then performing a cesarean delivery. And that meant racing on the morning of Aug. Photo courtesy of the Mays family.īut the doctors knew that the only way to save Sarah’s life - and the baby girl who wasn’t due for two-and-a-half more months - was to give the mother’s lungs a chance to rest and recover. Kabrini Mays, hours after she had to be delivered at 29 weeks. Never during the pandemic had doctors at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital put a pregnant COVID-19 patient on the last-chance, external lung and oxygenation system known as ECMO, much less delivered a 29-week preemie minutes later. Even with the ventilator’s help, her blood saturation levels, which should have been hovering close to 100%, had plummeted into the 70s and 80s. The young pregnant woman lay fully sedated and belly down in the hospital intensive care unit, attached to a ventilator that was pumping oxygen into her body at the highest possible settings.īut COVID-19 had ravaged Sarah Mays’ lungs. Sarah’s husband, Andrew Mays, feared COVID-19 might claim “both of my girls.” Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon for UCHealth. Sarah Mays and her daughter, Kabrini, nearly died after Sarah became critically ill with COVID-19 while pregnant.