'I'm thankful that I'm alive': Woman gives birth while in coma from COVID-19 complications
A New Hampshire mother is sharing her story after she went into a coma due to COVID-19 while pregnant and woke up to find out her baby had been born.
"I'm like, ‘Wow, this is amazing. I'm thankful that I'm alive,’” said Rocio Casalduc.
Casalduc is also thankful her newborn daughter Victoria is alive.
When the 20-year-old developed a dry cough during her second pregnancy, she went to the hospital, where she was tested for COVID-19.
“I was COVID positive, and that's when I just, I just dropped. I couldn’t even think I was so nervous,” she said.
Casalduc said she answered some difficult questions.
“If I had to choose between me or my daughter's life, who would I choose, and that's when I don't even know, I just started to cry,” she said.
Casalduc said she asked doctors to save her baby's life before she was intubated and went into a coma for three weeks
She woke up at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon and learned she had given birth to little Victoria about three months early. She also learned that her family -- her mother, sister, boyfriend and baby son -- all had COVID-19, too, and all had recovered.
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Baby Victoria is still in the hospital, but she's on the path to recovery.
“I just told them we're not going to let her leave so soon. We're going to fight. She's a fighter just like me,” Casalduc said.
“Up to this day today, she's still fighting. She's still a little sick, but she's like me: she's a fighter,” she added.