Nearly three months after Kelsey Townsend gave birth to her fourth child, the 32-year-old Wisconsin woman finally came face to face with her.
Lucy, now bright-eyed and alert, gave her a smile.
“Hi. I love you. I love you so much. Yes, I missed you,” Kelsey Townsend said to her.
Townsend was in a medically induced coma with COVID-19 when she delivered Lucy via Caesarean section on Nov. 4, not long after arriving at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison. She ended up spending 75 days on living and lung support. She finally met Lucy on January 27 – the day Kelsey was released from University Hospital in Madison.
“We bonded immediately when we met. She gave me a really big smile and looked at me like she knew exactly who I was, which made me so happy, ”said the woman in Poynette, Wisconsin.
Dr. Jennifer Krupp, a maternal fetal medicine specialist and the medical director of women and newborns for the SSM Health Wisconsin Region, said it is rare for the hospital to deliver a baby to a mother so sick with COVID-19.
Kelsey Townsend’s oxygen saturation was very low when she arrived at the hospital – so low it could damage the brain and other organs of a fetus – and her skin was tinted gray and blue, Dr. Thomas Littlefield said via email on Wednesday. so her baby had that done to be delivered as soon as possible.
Doctors thought Townsend might need a double lung transplant in late December. But then she started to improve – so much so that she was removed from intensive care, taken off ventilator in mid-January, and removed from the transplant waiting list.
Townsend’s husband, Derek Townsend, described the experience as a ‘big rollercoaster’.
“There were many, many nights when I got late at night and into the wee hours of the phone calls, and the doctors told me they have done everything they can to support Kelsey and they are having a hard time stabilizing,” he said. “So there were many times when we thought we were going to lose her.”
Derek Townsend says even his daughter seemed to notice that someone was missing while his wife was still in the hospital.
“For the past three months with Lucy, you know, her head is always moving and she’s always looking. And I told Kelsey that I believe she’s just constantly looking for her, ‘he said.
The couple got COVID-19 despite taking precautions, Derek Townsend said. As he got better, his wife got worse. Then they went to the hospital.
“Family is everything to me,” said Kelsey Townsend. “So I have everything to live for here and to come home. There was no doubt that I wouldn’t. “