A mother who underwent an emergency C-section while on a ventilator because of COVID-19 died without ever seeing or holding her newborn.
35-year-old Aurora Chacon Esparza was hospitalized at Brooklyn Center’s North Memorial Health Clinic in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms while 30 weeks pregnant.
After being put on a ventilator due to complications related to the disease, Esparza’s doctors said that she needed to undergo emergency C-section because they were worried her baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
At 30 weeks into the pregnancy, Esparza underwent emergency C-section and baby Andrea was born healthy.
Tragically, however, the newborn’s mother didn’t make it through the ordeal. As Aurora’s family announced on GoFundMe, Andrea’s mother died on Sunday.
“My wife Aurora now rests in peace with God. She passed away today in the early morning of Sunday July 19th 2020,” Juan Duran, Aurora’s husband, wrote on GoFundMe.
“I have faith in God that she is with him and has moved on to better life. We will forever miss her and remember her for the strong, loving and caring person she was. I appreciate all of your prayers and well wishes since day one.”
As Juan previously explained in an interview with FOX 9, he believed that their trip to the hospital would be short because his wife appeared to be healthy despite displaying some COVID-19 symptoms.
“She is a 35-year-old healthy woman with no pre-existing conditions. We never thought this could happen to our family,” he said.
Following days of hospitalization, doctors, being worried both about the mother and her baby, decided it was best to perform an emergency C-section.
While baby Andrea was born healthy, her mother’s condition continued to worsen and the doctors suggested Aurora should be placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) life support machine.
Since North Memorial Health Clinic isn’t an ECMO center, a series of transfer requests were filed, but they were all denied due to stringent criteria.
Sadly, Aurora died on Sunday before getting the chance to meet her newborn.
Replaced!