On the last day of her life, Kathryn Ellen Pryla shopped for groceries, hoping to cook and freeze some dinners in advance of her son’s birth.

Pryla was eight months pregnant, and she and her wife, Kaitlin Schroeder, had already picked out a name for their son: Callum James.

It was Oct. 19, 2023. Pryla had been to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton on Sept. 30, for symptoms that felt like the flu: a cough, fatigue and shortness of breath.

She was monitored for several hours, given a chest X-ray and sent home with instructions to return if her symptoms worsened.

At about 2 p.m. on Oct. 19, Pryla’s busy phone went silent. Schroeder, at work in Milton, assumed she was having a nap.

“She was nesting hard during the day, cleaning, organizing things,” said Schroeder, 32, an operations manager

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