A pregnant nurse wanted to wait to get the Covid-19 vaccination because she was concerned about how it would affect her unborn daughter. Now, the woman's husband is raising awareness after the virus took the lives of his wife and their baby.
"It's not easy," Jordan Richardson told CBS affiliate WKRGof Mobile, Alabama. "She just loved everybody."
Haley Mulkey Richardson of Theodore, Alabama, died from the coronavirus on Friday, two days after her baby's death.
Jordan Richardson said their daughter was due in November and they planned on naming her Ryleigh Beth. Their older daughter, Katie, is 2 years old.
"I was excited. I already have a little girl and everybody asked when we were trying for our second, 'You want a boy? You want a boy?' And I told them, 'Nope, I want another girl,''' he said. "I love her to death, and I was so excited when I found out that’s what we were having."
Haley Richardson, 32, contracted the virus in late July and was hospitalized at the beginning of August when her symptoms began to worsen, her husband told the news station. She was eventually admitted to the intensive care unit, where she later died.
Jordan Richardson said his wife wanted to wait to get vaccinated against the coronavirus because she wasn't sure how it would affect her pregnancy.
"We were just worried that there may be complications from that standpoint with having a baby and once she was pregnant, so she was not vaccinated," he explained.
Shortly before Haley Richardson's death, she posted a message on Facebook about her unborn daughter and said she was praying for "miracles."
"Here in the dark, in the wee hours of the morning, it is so easy to pretend that all of this was just a nightmare or that I'm just here in this hospital bed due to my own issues with Covid," she wrote. "Not for anything being wrong with my sweet baby girl whom I thought I was protecting in my own womb."
"I know the prognosis and I know the reality," she wrote. "And while part of me may start to acknowledge this, the other part of me still believes God is still the God of miracles and is in control above all else. I hope and pray for miracles, but having said that I am also praying for his will to 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."
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged all pregnant women to get the vaccination as hospitals in hot spots around the United States saw disturbing numbers of unvaccinated expectant mothers seriously ill with Covid-19.
According to data from the CDC, pregnant women who have not gotten the shot run a higher risk of becoming severely ill and having pregnancy complications.
"The vaccines are safe and effective, and it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.
Jordan Richardson said had his wife known the tragic outcome, she would have "advocated for" the vaccination.
