'I fought off Covid to see my daughter grow up'

A nurse whose baby was delivered three months early in a bid to prevent them both dying from Covid says wanting to see her daughter grow up gave her the strength to recover.

Rose spent 18 days in intensive care at Scunthorpe General Hospital in December 2020. She was so ill she didn't meet her newborn baby for more than a fortnight.

The mum-of-four was left with permanent lung damage and "long Covid", and was unable to go back to work for two and a half years.

But she said her desire to see Catherine grow up gave her a reason to "fight back".

Rose began her maternity leave early, 28 weeks into her pregnancy. It was December 2020 and the second major wave of Covid had struck.

Just two days after leaving work, the theatre nurse sensed something was wrong.

"I felt rough. I got a high temperature, body aches. The next day I went for the [Covid] test and it was positive. I couldn't believe it," she said.

Rose quickly deteriorated. "I was in bed all the time. I was coughing and I felt like I [was] struggling to breathe. Then I was hit by a headache. [It was] agony [and] I couldn't open my eyes."

When one of her sons asked if she was OK, she was unable to speak and so she wrote "999" in the air with her finger.

Rose was admitted to intensive care at Scunthorpe General, where she found herself being cared for by her own colleagues.

She feared that neither she nor her baby would survive.

"I was constantly coughing, bringing up blood and phlegm, and I was really struggling for breath," she said.

"The obstetric consultant came and said 'We need to deliver this baby', and I said 'No, there is no chance you're going to deliver this baby because if I am dying, I'd rather die with the baby'."

Her husband, Jimmi, persuaded Rose to change her mind, and Catherine was delivered by Caesarean section at 28 weeks.

But Rose was so ill in intensive care that it was more than two weeks before she met her daughter.

Catherine is now four and a half. Energetically playing games with her three brothers and her cousin, she shows little sign that she weighed just 1kg (2lb 3oz) at birth and spent the first two months of her life in neonatal intensive care.

Rose, on the other hand, is still struggling to overcome her Covid infection. With 25% of her lungs damaged, she is reliant on steroids and painkillers.

Long Covid has left her with joint pain, brain fog and memory problems, breathlessness and exhaustion.

"I couldn't go up the stairs. With my husband's help, I could only walk very short distances," she said.

Describing her recovery as "a very long journey on a very bumpy road", she said Catherine, her husband and their sons had been her "strong pillars" who kept her pushing through.

"With all the pain and what I went through, I could have come to a point where I was giving up," she said.

"Maybe that was the reason I thought 'I have to fight back, I have to come back to normal life. I want to see Catherine growing up'.

"That had a huge impact on my recovery."