31 December,2009 07:51 AM IST | | Agencies
Mother, newborn son revived after 'dying' in labour on Christmas eve
A Colorado woman says a Christmas miracle brought her and her newborn son back from the brink of death after her heart stopped beating during childbirth and the baby was delivered showing no signs of life.
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"I got a second chance in life," said Tracy Hermanstorfer.
The 33-year-old was being prepped for childbirth at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs on Thursday morning. Her husband Mike (37) was by her side when she began to feel sleepy and lay back in her bed.
"She literally stopped breathing and her heart stopped," saidu00a0 Mike. Pandemonium erupted as doctors and nurses tried to revive her with chest compressions and a breathing tube, but nothing worked.
"I was holding her hand when we realised she was gone," said Mike. "My entire life just rolled out." Doctors told him, "We're going to take your son out now. We have been unable to revive her and we're going to take your son out," he recalled.
After the Caesarean section, some of the team rushed his wife to the operating room while the others attended to Coltyn. They handed him to Mike, who said the baby was "absolutely lifeless."
"My legs went out from underneath me," he said. "I had everything in the world taken from me, and in an hour and a half I had everything given to me."
The doctors went to work on Coltyn as Mike held him, and soon he began to breath.
"His life began in my hands," he said. "That's a feeling like none other. Life actually began in the palm of my hands."
No signs of life
Stephanie Martin, a maternal foetal medicine specialist at the hospital, said Tracy's pulse returned even before she was wheeled out of the room and into surgery. She estimates Tracy had no heartbeat for about four minutes.
"She had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn't breathing," said Martin, who had rushed to Tracy's room to help. "The baby was basically limp, with a very slow heart rate."
After their stunning recovery, both mother and the baby, named Coltyn, appear healthy with no signs of problems, Martin said.
She said she cannot explain the mother's cardiac arrest or the recovery.
"We did a thorough evaluation and can't find anything that explains why this happened," she said.
Mike credits "the hand of God". "We are both believers ... but this right here, even a nonbeliever you explain to me how this happened. There is no other explanation," he said.
