Alabama family mourns pregnant nurse, unborn child died of COVID: “We are glad she is not in pain”

A family in southern Alabama is in mourning after a 32-year-old mother who was pregnant with her second child died of COVID-19 on Friday.

Haley Mulkey Richardson, 32, was a registered nurse working in a labor and delivery unit at Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola and living in Theodore, Alabama, according to friends and family in the Mobile area.

Richardson’s mother Julie Mulkey said she was doing as well as you might expect after losing a daughter and an unborn grandchild.

“It’s really tough,” Mulkey said. “It’s difficult to accept, it’s difficult to face. We are happy that she is no longer in pain.

Richardson lived just outside of Mobile in Theodore with her husband Jordan Richardson and their daughter Katie, who turns 3 this week.

Jason Whatley, a family friend whose wife was the bridesmaid at Richardson’s wedding, told AL.com that Haley contracted COVID-19 about three weeks before her death in late July or early August.

“She was sick at home for about a week and then her heart rate increased,” Whatley said. “I guess it’s something they’re looking for.”

From there, Richardson was taken to USA Health Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Mobile. After staying there for a few days, she was transported to the intensive care unit on the main campus of USA Health Hospital in Mobile.

“After about three or four days in the hospital, the [obstetrician] told her she was going to lose the baby, ”Whatley said. “And she just kept getting worse and worse.”

“At one point, they basically told him we had to start treating you like you had no children. We have to do what we can for you because the baby is going to pass anyway.

Mulkey said her daughter could not have visits once transferred to the United States.

“Haley called me crying, saying she was going to lose the baby,” she said. “And she was there all alone when it happened.”

Richardson was able to post a final public post to Facebook on August 9.

“Here in the dark, in the wee hours of the morning, it’s so easy to pretend it was all a nightmare or that I’m right here in this hospital bed because of my own issues with Covid,” Richardson wrote. . “Just because something was wrong with my sweet little girl didn’t mean I thought I was protecting in my own womb.

“I know the prognosis and I know the reality. And while part of me may begin to recognize this, the other part of me still believes that God is still the God of miracles and that he is in control above all else. I hope and pray for miracles, but that said, I also pray that his will be done. If there has ever been a time to ask for something to be taken out of my own hands and put in his, it is now. “

Mulkey said her daughter’s faith was characteristic of the way she lived her life.

“Haley was a Christian,” Mulkey said. “She fully believed in her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She lived it every day. You could see it in the smile on his face. She was a nurse in labor and delivery, and she greeted her patients with kindness, concern and love and often bore witness to them and prayed with them.

Whatley said Richardson was the rock of his family.

“She was the nicest person I have ever met in my life,” he said. “Every family has that one person who makes it all right. And even today, it’s like Haley was there, she would know what to do.

After learning that she would lose the baby, Richardson continued to deteriorate in hospital, until she was finally put on a ventilator about four days before her death.

Whatley said that at one point Richardson was on a waiting list to be transferred to UAB for ECMO treatment – a machine that acts like an artificial heart and lungs, pumping a patient’s blood to oxygenating it, then reinjecting it.

“Unfortunately, in a period of about 24 hours her condition worsened to the point where she was no longer stable enough for them to transport her,” he said.

The unborn child, Ryleigh Beth, died on August 18. Haley followed on Friday August 20.

“The doctor called us, I guess, around 1:30 am Friday morning and said things looked very dark and asked me where we were and how long it would take us to get there,” Mulkey said.

Mulkey said she, Jordan, Katie and Jordan’s mother Donna Richardson were able to say goodbye to each other.

Whatley said Richardson was in good health before catching COVID, with no pre-existing or chronic conditions, other than being around six months pregnant.

“She was a nurse,” Whatley said. “She knew exactly when to go to the hospital, when her heart rate was increasing.

“They wished she had been vaccinated, but other than that when she got sick they did whatever it took. And she’s still dead.

Mulkey said she and her daughter had had many conversations about the vaccine and Richardson chose not to get the vaccine because she was planning on having another child and was concerned about the potential for reactions. anaphylactics.

“Haley had had anaphylactic reactions in the past,” Mulkey said. “So for that reason she felt it wasn’t safe for her.

“And then, of course, with all the negative reporting that took place, what was she to believe about what the vaccine would do to the breeding ground?”

“Stuff on that, it would destroy a female’s eggs and that sort of thing, and she wanted to have her second baby.” It scared him to get it.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that pregnant women get the vaccine if they haven’t already. The CDC says vaccine data continues to show the vaccine is safe for women at all stages of pregnancy, women planning to become pregnant, and women who are breastfeeding.

Dr Karen Leigh Samples, chair of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Huntsville Hospital for Women and Children, told AL.com there was no evidence the vaccine would impact fertility a woman’s.

“The claims linking COVID-19 vaccines to infertility are unfounded and have no scientific evidence to support it,” Samples said. “The ACOG (American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology) recommends vaccination for all eligible people who may be considering a future pregnancy.”

Mulkey said the hospital where Richardson worked required all employees to be vaccinated by November, but she wanted to wait after delivering her baby.

“We’ve talked about this a number of times,” Mulkey said. “She said at one point that she was about to do it. And it’s just that she … she couldn’t do it.

“If she had had the information that has come out since this happened to her, yes, she would have had it.”

Mulkey said she and her other daughter have both decided to get the vaccine since Richardson’s illness. Now she is specifically targeting pregnant women to urge them to get vaccinated.

“Since her illness, we have found that it affects a huge number of pregnant women who are 26-27 weeks pregnant,” she said. “And the baby died two days before she was 27 weeks old. So I understand that there are quite a few women at UAB in the same shape.

Doctors at UAB Hospital in Birmingham reported last week that there were 10 pregnant women in their intensive care unit with COVID-19, seven on ventilators.

When asked if the Delta variant was responsible for the increase in the number of pregnant women admitted to hospital, Dr Akila Subramaniam of UAB replied “quite simply yes”.

Southern Alabama was particularly hard hit by the Delta variant, with Mobile and Baldwin counties having some of the state’s highest numbers of cases in early August, around the time Richardson fell ill. Several intensive care units in southern Alabama hospitals are now overcapacity, although there has been a slight drop in recent days. The state as a whole is approaching a record number of COVID hospitalizations.

Mobile County Health Department epidemiologist Rendi Murphree said on Friday in an update that Mobile County had recorded 960 deaths from COVID-19 and nearly 60,000 total cases since the start of the pandemic.

But vaccination rates are also starting to rise, as the variant rages across the country.

“I had held back my own shot,” Mulkey said. “Now that I’ve done that, the second will be coming later this week. My oldest daughter is the same.

“And we have a couple across the street waiting, and one afternoon I ran over there, and I said ‘listen, if you haven’t, go on. to do. “

“It absolutely had a big influence on our opinion. Watching what my precious daughter went through was indescribably difficult, ”she said.