A mother says she was ‘clinically died’ for 14 minutes and then awoke to discover she had given birth to a baby girl. Natasha Sokunbi, 30, was 37 weeks pregnant when she dialled 111 due to chest pains and breathing problems.
After being advised to rush to A&E, she collapsed from a cardiac arrest at Royal Stoke University Hospital’s waiting room. While some medics focused on reviving her, others performed an emergency caesarean section to deliver her daughter Beau, who weighed in at 6lbs 7oz.
Following a tough 30-minute resuscitation attempt, Natasha was stabilised and placed into an induced coma. The next day, still in critical care, she was informed about the birth of her child.
Natasha, who lives in Stafford, said: “My heart wasn’t beating when the doctors delivered Beau. I was basically dead when they pulled her out.
“One team of medics were delivering her via C-section while another team performed CPR on me. The next thing I remember was when I woke up in intensive care and my husband walked over to me with a photo of Beau and said ‘it’s a girl’.”
The news was a surprise, as they had chosen not to find out the sex of the baby beforehand. Despite being initially too frail to meet Beau, who was in the neonatal unit, Natasha finally saw her daughter a few days after the incident.
Despite facing a life-threatening situation, Natasha expressed immense gratitude towards the medical team that saved her and her baby: “I was really poorly but the doctors and medical teams were amazing. They told me I’d been clinically dead for 14 minutes. They saved my baby and they saved me,” she said.
Natasha and her husband Ayo, 29, were anticipating the birth of their second child when she collapsed on December 3. Originally from South Wales, Natasha, a support worker, recalled feeling unwell due to a chest infection: “I wasn’t feeling well for a couple of weeks because of chest infection. On that morning I called 111 who advised me to make my way to the Royal Stoke.
“I got a taxi to the hospital and went into triage and told them I was really having problems breathing and they told me to wait. As I walked back into the waiting room I collapsed and fell forward onto my baby bump.”
Natasha remembered fragments of the ordeal, including the CPR and defibrillation attempts by doctors: “I remember bits, like the doctors performing CPR and putting a defibrillator on me. When I was having the C-section I remember being in pain but then everything going black.”
After delivering her son Beau, the medical staff informed her partner Ayo, also a support worker, who rushed to be with her. Natasha said: “Ayo had no idea I was in hospital because he was asleep with our other baby daughter when I took a taxi to A&E. When he received a call from the hospital he thought they were telling him that I’d had the baby but they said he should get here straight away.”
She fondly recounted Ayo’s presence during her coma: “He was so good. When I was in the coma I can remember hearing him talking to me saying ‘Come on Tash’ ‘Please wake up’.”
After a three-week stay in hospital, Natasha was fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator to prevent future cardiac arrests. Now at home with her two children, Beau and her 15-month-old daughter Love, she reflects on her experience: “I have had heart problems and I think the pregnancy put extra strain on me.”
She admits to having flashbacks and fears of a recurrence but expresses immense gratitude towards the medical team: “I’m just so grateful to the doctors for saving me and Beau. To start with I couldn’t hold her very well, but I always tried to do skin to skin with her. Being a mum of two is great and I’m regaining my strength and independence.”
Natasha calls her baby Beau a miracle and feels unable to fully express her thanks: “Beau is a miracle, and you can never fully put what they’ve done for us it into words. The staff were all fantastic. Now I’m much more appreciative of life and won’t take anything for granted ever again.”
The staff who cared for Natasha and Beau received the Chief Executive Award for their exceptional service.
Dr Andrew Bennett, one of the first doctors to respond, highlighted the complexity of such emergencies: “The issue when you have a mother who goes into cardiac arrest is that you not only have the team required to resuscitate mum, you, very quickly of course when the baby is out, also have a team ready to resuscitate the baby if that’s required.
“So the number of clinical teams involved is huge. This has got to be one of the proudest moments that this department really has ever seen and that collaborative effect from all involved was incredible.”
Senior sister Alison Hopwell remarked on the extraordinary nature of the event, stating: “It’s a rare event but it happened and it happened on a very very busy December morning.”
“The department was very busy; however, the whole team, too many to mention, from all specialties pulled together on that morning.”
Dr Simon Constable, chief executive, echoed the sentiments on the severity of the case involving Natasha and Beau, remarking: “Natasha’s case is about as serious as it gets and involves not just one person but multiple teams looking after and getting the outcome for her and Beau.
“It’s a great testament to the real skill and teamwork that made the outcome what it is because it could have been so very different and I think we recognise that would have been a tragedy.”