PREMIUM!
Pregnant mom who fought Covid-19 gives birth to a healthy baby boy
Morgan Brink had a few scares during her pregnancy, including testing positive for Covid-19.
Morgan Brink-Facebook
Morgan Brink tested positive for COVID-19 about a week after the national lockdown began in South Africa. She was 22 weeks pregnant at the time. The 30-year-old mom was even more shocked when doctors discovered traces of malaria in her blood.
Morgan, her husband Ruan and their 3-year-old son Jaxon went on a cruise for her sister-in-law’s 21st birthday. The second-time-mom started feeling unwell about a week after their return: she had a cough along with headaches and lethargy. Morgan was tested positive for Covid-19 on 1 April – fortunately Ruan and little Jaxon tested negative. But she had an unborn son that she was extremely worried about.
Image: Roodepoort Record
So started a very eventful pregnancy journey for the Brink family from Allen’s Nek in Johannesburg.
On 10 April, Morgan received the wonderful news that she had beaten the coronavirus and that everything was well with her unborn baby – the family was ecstatic. But this was short lived: just a month later, on 14 May, Morgan had to go back to the hospital. Her waters had broken, but she was only 27 weeks pregnant. Luckily, doctors were able to close the rupture and treat her painful contractions.
There was light at the end of the dark tunnel – or so they thought. Unfortunately, Morgan had a couple more hospital visits – the mom-to-be suffered two infections after her preterm labour, bleeding when she was 32 weeks pregnant and to top it all, she tripped and fell while walking. Fortunately, she was able to keep her unborn baby protected from the impact of her fall.
Also Read: How dangerous is Covid-19 for pregnant women?
The testing journey wasn’t over yet…
Last week, on 9 July, Morgan went into labour again. Unfortunately the doctors weren’t able to stop the labour and contractions a second time around. They to perform an emergency C-section on Saturday, 11 July, as they feared the baby was in distress.
Xavien Brink was born at 35 weeks, weighing 2,7kg at 11am on 11 July. Roodepoort Record reports that the newborn’s lungs didn’t develop fully, which meant he needed oxygen to breathe. He also had mild jaundice, but is doing much better after receiving light therapy.
The best news is that little Xavien was taken off the oxygen on Tuesday, 14 July,, but he’ll still need to stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for another two to three weeks.
Image: Facebook / Morgan shared these sweet photos as her Facebook cover image on Sunday
Morgan was discharged from hospital on the same day and will now only get to see Xavien for an hour a day – which is really hard for her. But, she completely understands the reasoning behind this, Morgan told Roodepoort Record.
She says Jackson is buzzing with excitement at home – he can’t wait to meet his baby brother.
Image: Facebook / Morgan with Jaxon
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