Woman gives birth to little girl 2 months after surviving COVID-19

HOUSTON, Texas -- Two months after recovering from COVID-19 while pregnant, a Houston mother has welcomed a healthy baby girl.

Esbeidy Reyes gave birth to little Ari Amor, who weighed in at 6 pounds, 10 ounces.

Back in June, Esbeidy faced a heartbreaking situation when she began feeling tired from something other than her pregnancy.



"I left work early because of a headache," Reyes said. "Then I started to run a fever."

Her husband took her to a hospital where she was examined and tested for COVID-19. The result was positive. "I self-quarantined for several days, but then I kept getting worse."

She ended up in ICU at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.

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"I felt awful," she said. "I was having trouble breathing, and I didn't want anything to happen by my baby."

Esbeidy was already a high-risk pregnancy patient. She miscarried late last year.

She was in ICU for days. "I signed the C-section paperwork. I thought only my baby was going to survive. I didn't think I was going to survive," she said.

Her doctor administered plasma from someone who had recovered from the virus, which contains antibodies. Esbeidy responded quickly. "Two days later I was able to get out of the hospital bed without help."

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She doesn't know how she became infected.

Because she works in the medical profession, she was already paying attention to the growing number of cases in the Houston area. "I know about hospital admissions, and they started going up after the businesses reopened. All those people and everyone acting like the COVID-19 was gone, and I was like, 'It's not gone.'"

Esbeidy said she will tell Ari one day what they both went through because of a pandemic.

"I'm going to tell her she's my little soldier. She's my motivation. She kept me going. I didn't want to lose my baby."

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