WEST CHESTER, Ohio — Megan Sites’ story made headlines last year when she woke up to her new baby after she was hospitalized for COVID-19. One year later, she’s celebrating in a different way.
What You Need To Know
- Last year, Megan Sites, who was otherwise healthy, was fighting her life on a ventilator from COVID-19
- She got a life-saving blood treatment and her baby was delivered
- She celebrated the baby boy’s first birthday and Mother’s Day
Sites is a nurse, busy taking care of pregnant patients, until one day she was one of them.
“I was doing fine until I wasn’t,” she said.
She was almost seven months pregnant when she was tested positive for COVID-19 and ended up in the hospital.
“My breathing became troubled, and went to the ER,” she said. “Within 20 minutes of being in the ER, they had me put on a ventilator.”
She got so sick from the virus that she was put in a coma and on a ventilator to get treatment. Her husband, Donny, worried neither her nor their baby would come out alive.
“They said it was a 30-40% chance she was going to survive, and never being able to see her or talk to her, that made it pretty hard,” he said.
But after a blood treatment called EKMO at UC Health Hospital in Cincinnati, she woke up to news her baby was already born, 11 weeks early but COVID-19 free.
“I kinda was shocked to hear we were in different hospitals from each other,” she said, “but it was awesome to be able to hold him cause I’d only seen pictures of him or FaceTime, but it took a little bit to you know, like ‘this is my baby,’” she said.
They named him Jameson. The, now, healthy energetic one-year-old, keeps his parents busy. His mommy is now fully recovered, and back to work as a nurse in labor and delivery, vaccinated this time, with a whole new outlook on life.
“Any way that we could try to prevent a bad outcome from happening, we do,” she said.
