Tragic photo shows Covid mum’s last moment with newborn baby

Little did any of them realise that the family snap would capture the first and last time she would ever get to hold her newborn baby.

A tragic photo has captured the moment a mum held her newborn baby for the first and last time before she succumbed to Covid-19.

Kristen McMullen, from Florida in the US, briefly took off her mask and stared into her daughter’s face for the duration of two photos before she was wheeled away to a Covid-19 ICU ward.

Her daughter, named Summer Reign, was born on July 27.

Less than two weeks later, on July 8, Ms McMullen took her last breath.

She had only seen her daughter on that one occasion when she died.

Ms McMullen – who was only 30 – only got to hold her child for just “a few short minutes before she was rushed off to the ICU,” according to her aunt, Melissa Syverson.

The US mother was able to spend her final 10 days alive watching her daughter through Facetime.

“She couldn’t interact,” Ms Syverson said in a GoFundMe page.

“But at least she could see Summer while she was being cared for and just look at her. And then her breathing just progressively got worse.”

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The first and only time Kristen McMullen would ever get to hold her baby daughter. Picture: GoFundMe

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Ms Syverson said her niece had always wanted to be a mum and had been trying for several years with her husband Keith to get pregnant.

Three weeks before Ms McMullen’s due date, she was diagnosed with Covid-19.

She was rushed to hospital on July 21 as her condition had worsened and she now had coronavirus-related pneumonia where she was “not able to breathe”.

Kristen McMullen Facetimes her daughter while in the Covid ICU ward. Picture: GoFundMe

It is now up to Keith McMullen to look after his baby daughter. Picture: GoFundMe

Because of Covid-19 restrictions, her husband wasn’t allowed in the hospital.

However, several hours later Mr McMullen received a “heart-wrenching” phone call from hospital staff urgently bringing him back to his wife’s side.

They had to perform an emergency C-section.

It was at this point that the new parents were able to take two precious snaps of themselves together as a family with their daughter, before Ms McMullen was taken to the Covid ward where she would later die.

Kristen and Keith McMullen at their wedding in 2018.

Ms McMullen had always wanted to have kids.

Ms McMullen was put on oxygen with an additional CPAP machine.

She took her last breath on August 8.

It is unclear whether she was vaccinated.

The family created a GoFundMe page to cover the “insane hospital bills” expected to be coming their way.

At time of writing, the fundraiser had amassed US$48,522 (A$65,837) in donations.

To date, the US has recorded 36.6 million cases of Covid-19, with 621,000 deaths – the highest in the world.

Of those, 2.88 million cases came from Florida and 40,766 deaths have tragically occurred in the state.