In October 2022, Whāngarei mother Jess Smith was overjoyed to welcome her much-longed-for baby daughter Kaiya.
Excited to spend maternity leave bonding with her newborn, it was supposed to be one of the happiest times of her life.
But just weeks after giving birth, the beauty therapist was plagued by a constant cough and chest pain that made it hard to breastfeed Kaiya, and almost impossible to run around after her two-year-old son Myles.
“It was like a cold that
