When the delta variant of COVID-19 spread across the U.S., reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes began to hear reports that an increasing number of pregnant women with the virus were becoming so sick that they needed intensive care. With help from a local hospital, Jennifer reached out to the family of one young mother who had barely survived COVID-19. The 26-year-old unvaccinated woman, Victoria Kelehear, had just come off a ventilator after nearly dying.
Two months earlier, shortly after contracting the virus, Victoria had delivered her healthy baby girl by emergency C-section, then immediately been put onto a ventilator. She had not met her newborn yet. Jennifer was scheduled to meet the young woman at the hospital one afternoon to interview her. But a few hours before that interview, Jennifer’s sources in the ICU alerted her that the mother’s nurses were about to take the woman outside to meet her baby girl.
Jennifer alerted photographer Grace Beahm Alford, and they raced to the hospital. They arrived just in time to witness the emotional meeting of mother and newborn.
In “The journey of one pregnant woman who almost died of COVID-19,” Jennifer crafted a riveting narrative about the mother’s ordeal, framed in those moments when she held her baby for the first time.
She also used the riveting personal story to explore the broader medical issues at play for pregnant women hit with the virus. In clear layman’s terms, Jennifer explained how ECMO and other critical care treatments work. She also explained how pregnant women’s needs suddenly were overwhelming hospital intensive care units, and ECMO systems in particular, burning out healthcare workers and creating a dangerous situation for myriad patients who need the care.
The story hits that journalistic sweet spot where an incredibly compelling personal story illustrates a critical, timely public health issue that serves all readers to understand.