In 2021, Fiona Hooker, a 32-year-old woman from Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, experienced a very unusual pregnancy while expecting her second child, Barney.
When she was 31 weeks pregnant, she began to develop an intense rash on her abdomen that quickly turned into painful blisters and welts across much of her body.
After several tests, doctors diagnosed her with gestational pemphigoid, a rare autoimmune disease that affects approximately one in every 50,000 pregnant women and can cause the immune system to react against proteins related to the baby.
After giving birth, the lesions worsened to the point that it even hurt to hold her son, although she eventually received treatment and managed to recover.
