A mother met her newborn son for the first time after surviving coronavirus and an emergency c-section.
36-year-old Yanira Soriano was in her third trimester when she got hospitalized this month at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, New York.
She tested positive for pneumonia and COVID-19, according to Northwell Health, the hospital’s parent company and was put on a ventilator and had an emergency cesarean section at 34 weeks pregnant.
She met her son, Walter, for the first time outside of Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, New York, on April 15. “Because of the critical nature of her pneumonia, she had to go under general anesthesia and be put into a medically induced coma and be put on a ventilator,” Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Southside Hospital, said in an interview released by the hospital. “She was not awake when her baby was born and did not hear the baby cry or have any opportunity to meet him right after his birth.”
She had to remain in the intensive care unit (ICU) for nearly two weeks, after her son was transferred to a children’s hospital in New York City, according to Schwartz. But on Wednesday, Soriano got discharged from the hospital and was able to meet her son, Walter, for the first time.
Wearing a face mask, she was brought outside the hospital in a wheelchair with many health care workers cheering her on and she got to hold her son Walter for the first time. “It’s an incredibly proud moment for not just the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology but for Southside Hospital and the entire team that works here,” said Schwartz. “It takes many, many people over many, many shifts to provide the level of care that this patient needed.”
“As you know, many patients that end up on a ventilator with a COVID-pneumonia do not survive, and the fact that this mom not only survived but was able to get out of her wheelchair and walk into her car and hold her baby gives us all incredible hope for future patients and our existing patients that have COVID disease,” he said.
What a joy it must have been for the mother to hold her baby in her arms for the first time. It must have made her forget all her suffering and pain that she must have endured due to the coronavirus and emergency c-section.
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