‘My Covid coma made me forget I'd had a baby'

When Charlene Jones regained consciousness last Christmas, the 35-year-old couldn’t even remember giving birth

- ANN CUSACK

Sticking a piece of tape onto the final Christmas present, I let out a long sigh of relief.“I’m glad that’s done,” I said, rubbing my baby bump. “I’m exhausted.”

Christmas was always a happy time with my partner, Daniel Edwards, 37, a petrol sales assistant, and our children, Megan, Tomos and Freddie. And in the New Year, on 5 January, we were expecting a new addition – a fourth baby to make our family complete.

We had so much to look forward to. And yet the past few months had been very fraught. From the start, tests had picked up that my pregnancy could be high risk.

Daniel and I had faced an anxious wait until further scans came back clear. We discovered we were expecting a little boy, and we were thrilled.

Then I noticed the baby wasn’t moving as much as he should, and throughout the autumn of 2020, I was in and out of hospital for monitoring.

In November I went into early onset labour and I was admitted to hospital for steroid injections. It was such a worry. I had a routine Covid test, too, and to my surprise it came back positive. I’d been feeling a bit under the weather, but I just put it down to feeling tired with the pregnancy.

I had a second test, which came back negative, so it was thought I’d come to the end of the virus. The rest of the family all tested negative, too. Luckily, the labour slowed down and I was allowed home.

We thought that the panic was over. I was over awful Covid and I began planning for Christmas – putting up the tree, doing last-minute shopping and wrapping gifts.

PUT INTO A COMA

In mid December, I had a routine check which showed the baby’s heart rate was too high. Again, I was admitted to hospital.