‘Angel baby’ born at 24 weeks to mother in coma finally goes home

IDAHO FALLS — It was a moment several doctors, nurses and other EIRMC employees never imagined six months ago.

But on a recent afternoon, they were lined up outside the hospital NICU doors because of a baby, a mother and their unbelievable will to survive.

Admitted to the hospital

For that mother, Nancy Hernandez, it all started with a cough.

It was the end of March and Hernandez, a mother of six with one on the way, was feeling tired and thought she had a cold.

“My mom never really felt sick. She didn’t have any of the regular major symptoms of COVID,” says Paola Rojo, Hernandez’s daughter.

Hernandez came home from work, exhausted after a long day waitressing, when a friend stopped by.

“She had an oximeter. We put it on my mom, and it was at 76 when at a minimum. It was supposed to be at 90 because she was pregnant,” Rojo says.

Hernandez needed to go to the hospital. She was taken to EIRMC, diagnosed with a severe case of COVID-19 and admitted to the intensive care unit.

“She was in severe respiratory failure, and the uterine pregnancy complicated the situation,” EIRMC ICU Dr. Kenneth Krell tells EastIdahoNews.com. “When you’re that sick with COVID, we have to keep the patients deeply sedated and paralyzed, and she did require that degree of sedation.”

Doctors placed Hernandez in a medically induced coma. It was March 26, and she wasn’t due for four months. She couldn’t breathe and was placed on a ventilator.

“She had what we call barotrauma, where the lungs are so stiff and the airways crack,” Krell explains. “You get a lot of air in the lungs, requiring chest tubes and a lot of air through the skin.”

Rojo, who is 17, was left to care for the younger kids at home. Medical staff called daily with updates on her mom, and visits were rare because of COVID precautions.

“We don’t have any other family around us, and when they started giving me news that my mom wasn’t doing any better, I didn’t know what to think. I personally shut down,” Rojo recalls.

C-section in the ICU

Although pregnant women with COVID have been hospitalized at EIRMC, the ICU had never seen an expectant mother’s condition as bad as Hernandez’s. She was not getting better, and nine days after she was admitted, Dr. Krell made a big decision.

“Nancy deteriorated to the point where I was worried we weren’t getting enough adequate oxygenation to the baby, and we had to have an emergency C-section in the room,” Krell says.

A cesarean section in the ICU had never been done at the hospital before. Hernandez’s baby was just 24 weeks gestation and on April 4, Krell, Dr. Jordan Simpson of the hospital’s NICU, and others delivered a baby girl.

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