Pregnant mum says she almost lost her baby after allergic reaction to medication

Warning: This article contains images that some might find upsetting

A new mum is warning others after she almost lost her baby in pregnancy after experiencing an allergic reaction to medication.

Soraia Bonuar Gomes, 30, from Manchester, developed a potentially-life threatening skin condition just eight weeks into her pregnancy after taking naproxen and cyclizine.

She was prescribed the medications in June 2019 to treat painful menstrual cramps that began after the birth of her first child, Denzel, eight.

While Gomes continued to take the medications into her second pregnancy, this can be done if a doctor believes it will benefit the mother.

The naproxen was prescribed to treat Gomes' nausea, while cyclizine, an anti-inflammatory, treated the pain caused by her cramps.

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She fell pregnant just a month after she began the medications and she wasn't advised to stop, but her condition had rapidly deteriorated by September 2019.

Gomes experienced painful red marks that were at first misdiagnosed as chickenpox at a Manchester Hospital, where she was an inpatient for four days.

But quickly after she was discharged, she struggled to walk and called an ambulance that rushed her to St Mary's Hospital.

By this point, her face had swollen up and her skin had begun to peel.

She was transferred to the intensive care unit of Salford Royal Hospital where she was diagnosed with a 'potentially life-threatening skin condition'.

While doctors didn't know which drug caused the reaction, she was told to stop taking both.

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After numerous tests, she was warned that she had suffered an allergic reaction so severe that she could lose her baby.

She said: "As soon as I was in hospital, I didn't know if my baby would survive. They said I would lose my baby, but I didn't.

"I lost my vision, I couldn't walk, I was just stuck in the bed for two months being fed through a drip. It was so scary.

"All of my skin was burning all over my body.

"When I started reacting to the medicine, all of these bubbles appeared on my skin, like they were filled with water. It was very painful."

Gomes continued: "As soon as I was in hospital, I didn't know if my baby would survive. They said I would lose my baby, but I didn't.

"The doctors had to burst the bubbles so the fluid would come out. They had to put me to sleep, and they gave me lots of pain relief so I couldn't feel what they were doing.

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"Every time that I woke up, the first thing that I would ask is how is my baby. The doctors said I shouldn't think about the baby as I could lose it and just worry about myself but I always worried about my baby. It was so scary."

Gomes went on to spend two weeks in intensive care and then another two in a general ward recovering before she was discharged.

She said: "Hearing that my baby was going to survive, I felt like my world was going to be found.

"I was very scared for the rest of my pregnancy that I could lose my baby still."

But despite the risks, she went on to have a healthy baby girl in March 2020, Reyven-Vallenty.

Since then, she's had a third child, Allyson Ivenancya, now ten months old, in 2021, and said that she is 'so happy' with her family.