A new mother gave birth. COVID-19 would be her next battle.
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BY KAYLA GREEN
t took two weeks for the new mom to fight her way back from COVID-19's death grip before she could cradle her daughter in her arms. When she handed her to the nurse, she didn't know if it would be for the last time. Shaquilla James returned in May to McLeod Health Clarendon to donate plasma in the hopes the antibodies in her blood from the coronavirus can help save someone else. She was met with tears. Tears from the nurses who cared
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for her as she gave birth while being the first COVID-19-positive pregnant woman to do so in McLeod's seven-hospital system. Tears from her midwife. From her Nurse Family Partnership nurse, who has been working with the first-time mom since she was six weeks pregnant. From basically anyone, whether they watched her story unfold or heard it after the outcome was clear. As if motherhood, especially for the first time, isn't an emotional enough experience to navigate, throw in a highly contagious respiratory illness whose ongoing
pandemic means she had to choose either her mother or her sister to be in the delivery room with her and that the only thing she could see were masks, gloves, gowns, eyes and foreheads. It started with a cough. When the ambulance came to pick her up after her water broke last month, she could barely get dressed. "I was so weak and tired from the coughing," James said. When Aubree Pearson was born, they asked James if she wanted to isolate herself from her newborn.
