When Stacey Jones fell pregnant at the beginning of 2021, she and her fiancé Greg Dennett were over the moon.
The pair had suffered heartbreak just months earlier when Stacey had a miscarriage, but after learning she was expecting another baby, the mum was told her pregnancy was “low risk.”
She told The Mirror: “We found out she was a girl and that was just the best news ever. We were ecstatic.
“There were no girls in the family. All the grandchildren are boys. Sienna was very special before she was even here.”
For most of the pregnancy Stacey didn’t have many issues, and described her experience as “lovely.”
But there was one thing troubling the expectant mum, who is also mother to Stanley, three.
“We were in lockdown again and there was a lot of talk about pregnant women not having their [Covid] jabs,” Stacey, 34, recalled.
While Greg, an estate agent, went to have his vaccine, Stacey was unsure about whether or not to have the jab herself in case it put her baby at risk.
She said: “At first we were hearing that pregnant women shouldn’t get their jab. There was so much confused messaging.
“When I was at 20 weeks it changed and people were saying pregnant women should have their vaccine.
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“I decided there wasn’t enough evidence around it to warrant possibly putting my baby at risk, and I was nervous because I was carrying a girl.”
Stacey cited concerning reports from the FDA and the CDC in the US, which were advising women to avoid the Moderna vaccine at the time.
A few months into her pregnancy Stacey said Derriford Hospital, which was in charge of her care, began actively advising pregnant women to have their jab.
With a glucose test coming up, Stacey decided she’d have her vaccine if she was considered to be at risk of developing gestational diabetes. Otherwise, she’d wait until her daughter was born.
But Stacey didn’t have time to make the decision for herself, and tested positive for Covid-19 on 13 July when she was 24 weeks pregnant. While she was concerned about her own health, Stacey was much more worried for her unborn child.
“I’d been feeling movement from Sienna from six weeks but as soon as I caught Covid, that movement stopped,” she said.
As the panicked mum grew increasingly concerned, she went to hospital and told midwives her usually fidgety baby had stopped moving.
“They put a heart monitor on and could detect a heartbeat, so they sent me home,” Stacey recalled.
“When I got home I drank ice water and had a bath to try and get her moving but nothing worked so I went back to hospital two days later with the same issue.”
Again, Sienna’s heartbeat was monitored which seemed fine and Stacey was sent home.
But the next week at another scan, a midwife noticed Sienna’s growth seemed to be slow - under the 10th percentile for her stage in the pregnancy - and booked her in for a growth scan.
Stacey said after some insistence on her part, she managed to get an appointment for 9am the following day.
“Greg wasn’t going to come [to the scan] because of work but I told him I thought he should, just in case,” Stacey recalled.
“When they did the scan they could detect Sienna’s heartbeat as normal, but when they got to the placenta, they saw something was wrong.”
From there, Stacey and Greg say everything happened extremely quickly.
Stacey was given a more in-depth scan of her placenta, which showed it wasn’t giving Sienna the nutrients she needed in the womb.
“At about 10am we spoke to a consultant who basically told us we had 12-24 hours before our baby would be a stillborn,” Stacey said.
“At that moment I just switched off. I thought no baby was going to survive being born at 25 weeks. I was just in shock.
“The staff showed us leaflets that said Sienna had a 60% chance of survival, and then they took us up to NICU. It was an information overload.”
The doctors’ working theory was that the Covid infection had attacked Stacey’s placenta which essentially caused it to die.
Stacey was then seen by another consultant who said she needed to deliver right away and prepared the mum for a C-section.
Just six hours after Stacey and Greg had gone into hospital for a growth scan, Sienna was delivered at 25 weeks.
Recalling the whirlwind of Sienna’s birth, Greg said he “shut out the world” and did what he was told to do.
“Everything else goes out the window. You become somebody else. They’re telling you all these things and you just have to go with it,” he said.
“We went into the operating theatre singing songs our little boy sings. That’s how we coped.”
After a heart-stopping few moments of silence when Sienna was first delivered, Stacey described the relief of hearing her daughter cry.
She said: “It felt like ages after they took her out of me. They asked if I wanted to hold her and I just said, ‘no, take her away and save her life’.”
Greg added: “It was a moment of relief to know she’d arrived in the world and was safe. She had to go into an incubator but it was a relief that she’d got this far.”
While Greg was allowed to visit 1lb 9oz Sienna in NICU, Stacey, who was still testing positive for Covid, had to wait a few days for her first visit.
Recalling her first glimpse of her baby daughter, she said: “She was in a bag that was almost like bubble wrap and had breathing apparatus around her.
“She actually looked a little better than I thought she would but it wasn’t a pretty sight.”
The couple described the first few weeks of Sienna’s life as “insanity” while their daughter fought for her life.
“It’s such an intense environment. You’re just sat there anxiously waiting to be told something and everyone speaks very medically and you don’t understand what they’re talking about,” Stacey said.
When Sienna was just three days old, Stacey and Greg were pulled aside by a nurse and told the devastating news their daughter had just hours to live.
“She told us we needed to phone everybody to come in and say goodbye,” Stacey recalled.
But after preparing themselves for the loss of their daughter, the distraught parents were later told she needed hydration and a blood transfusion - an example of the volatility of a life in NICU.
Another terrifying moment came later that day when a consultant told the parents Sienna had a bleed on the brain which was causing a build up of fluid in her skull.
The tiny baby was too light to have an operation for a shunt to drain the fluid, so nurses used an Ommaya reservoir every single day to take out the excess liquid using a needle until she was big enough for surgery.
Thankfully, after having the shunt fitted Sienna continued to do well and didn’t have any more scares.
But the parents were still living between the hospital and their home - and Covid restrictions meant they weren't able to have family and friends meet Sienna.
Stacey said this was the most difficult part of their whole ordeal, and she criticised the Government after reports of parties in No. 10 during lockdown emerged.
"Due to the Covid rules we were truly on our own," she said. "The nurses were our support and friends. My son and family didn’t meet Sienna till she was three months old. Yet the government where holding parties."
She added it was frustrating that not as much emphasis was placed on Greg's mental health during their time in hospital.
Stacey said: “Greg had to leave the hospital and go back to work five weeks after Sienna was born. I spent time at the hospital but he had to go and make the money.
“Then he had to deal with me coming home from the hospital and he also had to be there for Stanley.
“People asked after me all the time but no one ever asked Greg how he was. People just expect men to get on with it.”
Although Greg was offered counselling, he didn’t think his therapist struck the right tone and decided not to continue.
“People just expect men to get on with it, as if they’re the rock,” Stacey said. “But the style of counselling for men needs to change.”
Although he’s critical of the mental health support he was offered, Greg has nothing but praise for the charity that helped him and Stacey while they were living in hospital, Keep Me Close.
Greg was so grateful for their support he has decided to take on the Three Peaks Challenge, scaling Ben Nevis, Scarfell Pike and Mount Snowdon in just 24 hours to raise money for the charity.
Sienna, now 10 months old, was discharged from hospital after 79 days and is now well, but Stacey and Greg were told early on that she will suffer from cerebral palsy due to brain damage.
“She was nicknamed ‘boss’ when she was in NICU because she was so assertive,” Stacey laughed. “She’s quite vocal, and she’s always laughing.
“Everyone comments on how happy she is and everyone loves her.”
A spokesman from the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are doing everything we can to encourage pregnant women to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their babies from Covid.
“We have always followed the expert advice of the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advised offering vaccines to pregnant women in line with the wider rollout from December 2020, focusing first on those at higher risk of exposure or complications from the disease, and then to all pregnant women in April 2021.
“We continue to work closely with the NHS, clinicians and partners to provide advice and information at every possible opportunity to support women getting vaccinated.”
NHS England also confirmed it had followed guidance from the JCVI and said it started advising women to have their Covid vaccinations as soon as the Committee issued guidance in April 2021 stating they should be offered their jab at the same time as other people in their age group.
Do you have a real life story to share? Email jessica.taylor@reachplc.com
