'If we can save one woman, one baby’: With daughter, grandchild in hospital, anguished Montreal man pleads for pregnant women to get vaccinated

An anguished father who's dividing his time between visiting his daughter on life support at a Montreal hospital and his premature grandchild in the pediatric ICU is imploring pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“This is the worst of the worst. Seeing your child with all these machines and all this tubing," he said.

"When you ask the doctor, ‘Is she going to be okay, are you going to save her?’ they don’t answer,” he said in an interview with CTV News, his voice breaking with emotion.

And his pain has been amplified, because it appears there were other forces at work when it came to his daughter’s decision making process around getting the COVID-19 vaccines that experts say would have helped protect her and her baby.

“She was afraid to get vaccinated and she was badly influenced by her friend,” who was anti-vaccination said her father, who we’ll call David to protect the identity of his daughter, who we’ll call Lindsay.

Lindsay's newborn, who was delivered about 30 weeks into her pregnancy due to her deteriorating condition, is being wheeled over regularly from the Montreal Children’s Hospital to the Royal Victoria Hospital’s ICU, both part of the McGill University Health Centre, so the premature baby can be placed “skin-to-skin” on their mother’s chest.

David was in the ICU when his grandchild was brought into Lindsay’s room and described the moment as “heartbreaking.”

“Ask any mother, ‘Would you like to be in a situation that they put the kid on your chest and you cannot touch it, you can not hug [them]?’”

He said what his family is going through is “devastating…like a bad movie.”

“Right now I feel like I’m living in a tunnel. It puts life really upside down in a second.”

The Quebec woman was about 29 weeks pregnant, and unvaccinated when she became sick with COVID-19 about five weeks ago. 

David explained that he decided to contact CTV after we first reported the story, because he wanted to do whatever he could to prevent another family from suffering through a similar crisis.

• READ MORE: Montreal hospital delivers baby to unvaccinated mother with COVID-19, who is now on life support

“I do understand this story could be helpful to others. You know, the influence of people on other people that jeopardize their life, it’s what we live right now,” he said, referring to the copious amounts of influential vaccine disinformation online and on social media.

“If we can save one woman, one baby,” by speaking out, he said, it will be worth it, adding he is aware from all his recent research that pregnancy increases the risk of COVID-19 complications.

David, who just received his third dose, said it’s hard for him to understand why some people are so skeptical.

“Do you really think it’s to make money for a pharmaceutical company? Come on, wake up,” he said. “It’s the entire world. And stop influencing people! If you want to influence people, influence them to get the shot.”

Unvaccinated pregnant women are six times more likely to end up in an ICU, according to experts and to the most recent Canadian surveillance data on maternal and infant outcomes.

“COVID-19 vaccination is recommended during pregnancy in any trimester and while breastfeeding,” states a fact sheet for doctors prepared by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada.

IT 'DEGENERATES' SO FAST

For the last two years, ICU doctors in Montreal and elsewhere have been reporting that a COVID patient’s condition can deteriorate rapidly. That’s exactly what happened to Lindsay.

Only a few days after developing symptoms, her health spiralled out of control, which surprised David, given that she has no chronic conditions, he said.

She was admitted to the Jewish General Hospital's ICU and was put on a ventilator.

But her health was deteriorating and so an emergency caesarean section was performed to deliver her baby about two months early.

David was shocked by “how fast it degenerates,” and was then worried for the baby, if they would get COVID, if they would survive.

He said his only joy comes from seeing that so far his new grandchild “is doing okay, getting better every day,” but the situation is still fragile.

Mother and baby were transferred to the MUHC, where Lindsay could be placed on ECMO, a type of life support system that does the work of her heart and lungs - it’s “the last machine they have, you know? After that, they have nothing else.”

“The care is amazing, incredible…they want to save [Lindsay]. They work so hard to save her,” he said.

David said he didn’t think to ask Lindsay if she’d gotten the shots when she was pregnant and wishes he had. He encouraged families and friends to broach the subject.

"Why don't you just verify with them if they are vaccinated?" he said. "Because I don’t wish this situation on anybody."