A mother whose baby girl died at nine-days-old after being born extremely premature and testing positive for Covid-19 has said it is deeply unfair for expectant women to be judged on whether they had the vaccine during pregnancy.
Katie Leeming, 22, of Kirkham, near Blackpool, was devastated when daughter Ivy-Rose died after being born 14 weeks premature. She believes she wouldn’t have given birth so early if she hadn’t become infected with coronavirus.
Miss Leeming told i that she had decided not to have a Covid vaccine while pregnant as she felt there hadn’t been enough research done into its impact on either her or her baby.
Having just endured the emotional turmoil of her baby Ivy-Rose Court’s funeral, she said she feels “pregnant women have been treated badly” during the pandemic.
“There are some people saying I ‘refused’ to have the Covid vaccine – but that simply isn’t true,” she said.
“A professional never once offered me the Covid vaccine while I was pregnant.”
The bakery assistant, who lives with partner Lee Court and has two boys aged four and three, explained that when she first became pregnant with her daughter, it was around April and pregnant women were only just starting to have the Covid-19 vaccine.
She said she is definitely not an anti-vaxxer and if she had not been pregnant, she would have willingly had both jabs – but her greatest fears were for her unborn baby.
“There wasn’t much advice at the time and it was all very confusing,” she told i. “When it comes to the vaccine, people have got to decide for themselves what it is best to do.
“I personally knew a woman who had the vaccine while pregnant and she suffered with bleeding in early pregnancy and almost lost the baby. This could have been unrelated to the vaccine, but it does worry you.
“For me, I thought I hadn’t become ill with coronavirus so far during the pandemic and I was being really careful and hardly going out apart from to work and I was doing my shopping online, so I thought I’d wait until after having the baby.
“Regardless of what they decide, pregnant women should not be judged for having the Covid vaccine or not as at the end of the day, they are trying to protect their baby.
“With me getting pregnant so soon after pregnant women were first starting to have the vaccine, it was a confusing time and there was a lot of conflicting information.”
While admitting it is difficult to know with hindsight whether she should have done things differently, Miss Leeming said: “If I had felt the Covid vaccine was 100 per cent safe for pregnant women, I would have had it.
“But because there was no solid advice at that time, I did not feel comfortable or reassured enough to have the vaccine.”