A mother from Texas says she has no recollection of giving giving birth to triplets after she was declared “clinically dead” for 45 minutes in a rare post-birth complication.
“The doctors had pulled all three babies out… actually, they were resting them on my stomach to do a delayed cord clamping after my Caesarean section.
“My arms flew up, and that was when my heart stopped,” she said.
Marisa Christie had experienced an amniotic fluid embolism (AFE). According to the AFE Foundation, this is a rare condition in which amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream shortly after birth, causing her to have an allergic reaction, reports The Independent.
Amniotic fluid normally enters the mother’s bloodstream during birth but allergic reactions occur only in 2.5 for every 100 000 births or one in 40 000 in the United States.
While the triplets were successfully delivered by her physician, Dr Amber Samuel, it was Christie’s anaesthesiologist, Dr Ricardo Mora, who noticed she was seizing and remembered seeing an AFE before.
“It’s pretty catastrophic. When it occurs, it’s about 80%, 85% fatal,” Mora told Today. “I asked Dr Samuel what she had done. She said she had just started pulling out the placenta – and that’s usually when this occurs … the separation of the placenta and uterus.”
Christie then stopped breathing and had no pulse as the doctors began performing CPR. She was placed on ECMO, the machine that controls the heart and lungs so her body could recover without working as hard.
“She essentially lost what we consider her whole blood volume,” Mora said. “We replaced her blood volume. But, for 45 minutes, she was clinically dead.”
“You can do the best CPR in the world, but if you don’t get enough blood to the brain, essentially they are alive but with brain damage,” he added. “I needed her to live to raise her triplets. So, it was a personal thing for me.”
Christie spent an entire week unconscious, and only learned about the birth of her three girls when she woke up.
All of them have since returned home and she is grateful to have made it through the experience, she says.