Vanessa Alfermann Wiki – Vanessa Alfermann Biography
Vanessa Alfermann, a nurse in Missouri, contracted COVID in November before vaccines were available and are now sharing her story to encourage others to get vaccinated. She was about halfway through her pregnancy in November 2020 when she and her husband contracted COVID-19. As a nurse at Missouri Baptist Hospital in Sullivan, she had spent the year treating COVID-19 patients and she knew how serious the virus can be, but she considered herself lucky to have had mild symptoms and recovered.
However, a few weeks later, she began experiencing back pain and cramps. At about 1:30 AM on November 24, I woke up to find that she was in labor. I just realized that this was not just spasms, that this was not something not to worry about; It definitely worked. And I realized something bad was happening, “Alfermann told KMOV News.
Vanessa Alfermann Age
Vanessa Alfermann is 32 years old.
Vanessa Alfermann Lost her baby to Covid
Vanessa Alfermann never had a chance to hug her son, Axel, before he died. A nurse at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in St. Louis, Alfermann contracted the coronavirus from her husband, Ryan, in November, just weeks before the vaccine was available to healthcare workers. The virus led to a rushed trip to the hospital and an emergency delivery at 20 weeks.
Axel did not survive. Now the 32-year-old Alfermann is sharing her story to encourage pregnant women to overcome her doubts about vaccinations and get vaccinated. She said she doesn’t want them to go through the same hardships, shocks, and losses that she suffered, especially if they get a chance to get vaccinated.
“They send you home and you have to start over,” she said. “I was stuck in bed. I didn’t speak to anyone, I was just in complete depression. It was devastating to lose Axel. He still is. I call him my missing piece.”
Alfermann’s decision to share her story coincides with the release of new research this month showing that Covid increases pregnancy risks, leading to premature births. A second study published earlier this week examined reactions to vaccines among pregnant people and showed that the vaccines were safe.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also recently recommended that pregnant women receive the vaccine.
“These studies are huge and have substantial numbers,” said Sabra Klein, co-director of the Center for Research on Women’s Health, Sex and Gender at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This is data that you can believe in, and I think the message is very clear: if you are pregnant and you are not vaccinated, you should be vaccinated. You should be more afraid of this virus, especially these new variants, than you should be” . of the vaccine “.
Despite being considered a high-risk population for Covid, less than a quarter of pregnant people have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the CDC. That’s a major problem, as the delta variant is much more infectious and has caused large numbers of unvaccinated people to be hospitalized.
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A University of California, San Francisco study published earlier this month found that the risk of preterm birth in less than 32 weeks was 60 percent higher among people infected with Covid during pregnancy, and the risk of giving delivery before 37 weeks. it was 40 percent higher. The risk was also substantially higher among those with hypertension, diabetes, or obesity.
Dr. Deborah Karasek, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and a researcher with the California Preterm Birth Initiative at UCSF, led the study, which looked at more than 240,000 California births that occurred between July 2020 and January 2021, including nearly 9,000 cases in which the woman was diagnosed with Covid during pregnancy.
“Our study is representative of all births in the state of California, so there is less chance of bias because it is a population-based study,” Karasek said. “Our findings are really based on a lot of evidence that we are seeing within the medical and public health community, so I think that, taken together, it really supports that we are seeing adverse effects of Covid infection in pregnancy.”
A study by researchers at the University of Washington found that pregnant women suffered no harmful or serious side effects from receiving the vaccine. More than 17,000 people participated in the study. Experts agree that these findings show a clear correlation, with some seeing it as a call for more pregnant people to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their children. Doctors on the ground said outcomes for pregnant Covid patients are deteriorating.
Dr. Marta Pérez, a Washington University worker at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said she has seen many pregnant women admitted to the ICU with severe respiratory distress. Fans or machines have been attached to them that pump and oxygenate their blood out of the body to give their hearts and lungs a chance to rest.
Some Covid patients who gave birth in hospital died from complications caused by the virus and were unable to meet their child. Others lost their baby or had to be quarantined without knowing their newborn.
“We are seeing all these ripple effects of really difficult situations with patients, many of whom may pass away without knowing their baby or may go weeks without knowing them,” she said. “Other patients may be unexpectedly separated from their baby because, due to Covid, the child needs additional care that we did not anticipate.”
Doctors and researchers said the biggest problem is misinformation, which has found a strong foothold among pregnant people and online pregnancy groups. Pregnant people are at increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes if they become infected, and there is no evidence that vaccination during pregnancy has adverse outcomes in the pregnant person or developing fetus,” Klein said. “And that’s it. Those are the facts.”
Alfermann said there is a lot of misinformation among her patients and in conversations with friends and family. She said it is traumatizing to see people close to her spread misinformation, and it has forced her to remove some people from her life. It is especially difficult to listen when she knows the effect Covid had on her pregnancy and the patients she and her colleagues treat in the Covid room every day.
“It’s like we’re drowning and to be honest I’m pissed off,” she said. “I’m mad that we have to deal with this and, to be a little selfish, I’m mad that we have to deal with this. But I love being a nurse, I love taking care of people, and I do it for Axel. No one else should have than to lose his baby, not his son, not his mother, not his father. ”
While Alfermann never had the opportunity to receive the vaccine to protect her unborn child, she said that pregnant people now have that opportunity. They should take advantage of it as soon as possible.
“I wish I had the vaccine six weeks earlier and my son was here, but I couldn’t,” she said. “Others have that opportunity though, and they can have their baby and be there for their baby. I just want Axel’s legacy to be one that helps save someone, helps him get the vaccine, so this never comes back. to happen”.