Meet the new Bradford mothers who appear with Stacey Dooley on BBC's Panorama

Stacey Dooley and the Lockdown Babies, which features the maternity unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary, will be broadcast on BBC One tonight (Monday) from 7.30pm.

The journalist and Strictly Come Dancing star interviews a number of women from the city, where coronavirus restrictions were last week strengthened again at short notice.

After being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, 24-year-old first time mother Katie Mahon gave birth to her baby boy, Jacob, by an emergency C-section at just 28 weeks on April 9.

Jacob weighed 940g when he was born, was put on oxygen and had to go in an incubator.

During the uneasy period, Miss Mahon had been able to visit her son in the Neo Natal Unit in Bradford, until she started to feel unwell with symptoms of Covid-19.

Theatre director Miss Mahon and her partner Lee Jones, 27, had to self-isolate at home for days until her test results came back negative.

She said: "I just cried a lot. They had told us we could video call into the unit but at that time he was in an incubator because he had an infection. We just decided that we didn't want to video call because it was going to be too difficult."

The family experienced three months in the hospital during the lockdown period before they were finally allowed home on July 8.

Jacob’s oxygen has been reduced and he is gaining weight.

Miss Mahon, who runs Bradford's Bloomin' Buds Theatre Company, said: "In that time, our parents weren't allowed to go in [the hospital] and meet him."

When their families did meet Jacob it was "very emotional", said Miss Mahon.

"My mum filmed us coming up the street in the car and put banners on the car."

She admits to being "a bit starstruck" by Dooley - who signed Jacob's Winnie the Pooh books - but said she was "really, really lovely and down to earth".

Her grandfather, 90-year-old Thomas Mahon, died during the period.

Though this was unrelated to coronavirus, Miss Mahon says her father could only see her grandfather for one hour in PPE before he died, and hopes that the Panorama film will remind people how serious coronavirus is and how it impacts on families who are exposed to health issues.

She said: "He didn't have coronavirus but the fact that the NHS has struggled so much to keep up with it will have impacted on the speed of treatment.

"Him being in the busy hospital himself will have also had an impact on [the way he personally experienced] his death."

Miss Mahon praised midwife Sophie Tordoff, who helped her during the delivery.

"She's an actual angel of a woman. She held my hand through the C-section, she talked to me. I would never have been able to get through it without her, not being able to have my mum there."

Gulshan Sabah, 32, is another Bradfordian mother, who gave birth to her second child during the lockdown period.

She and husband Zarar, 33, had planned to have two children but were unprepared for the latest experience.

"Little did we know what was going to happen," she said.

The pair were working in the run-up to her going into labour, and had to remain indoors with their daughter Amelia, who is 19 months.

"I struggled throughout the whole three months. I couldn't sleep, I was struggling to eat, my anxiety was really bad," she said.

Shortly before Gulshan went into labour and she was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary, it was her first time out of the house for an extended period for weeks.

"It was really, really strange. I was really nervous. I literally burst into tears."

The delivery went smoothly, and their baby boy, Mahir, was born in the early hours of June 18.

Although Gulshan did not feel totally recovered, she made the decision to go home later that day as she felt it was a safer space during the pandemic.

She is conscious that Asian people are at a heightened risk with coronavirus, especially after a family member was in hospital after catching it, and has not been out in public a lot since going home.

"Luckily she pulled through, somehow," she said.

But she thought, "it's happening in my own family, I can't risk leaving".

"I'm not able to do the things I did with my first daughter. I feel like he's going to lose out on a lot of things."

She said: "My life is precious, so is my children's. I would rather be safe than sorry."