Mother and baby revived after childbirth complications

December 30, 2009 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News

Tracy Hermanstorfer kisses her newborn son Coltyn

A mother and baby who doctors thought had died during childbirth were revived shortly afterwards.

Mike Hermanstorfer thought he had lost it all on Christmas Eve, but he was given it all back shortly after in what he now calls an “absolute miracle.”

Hermanstorfer’s wife, Tracy, was admitted to Colorado Spring’s Memorial Hospital for the delivery of her baby on Christmas Eve. Everything went according to plan until Tracy was given a local anesthetic.

“That’s when the nightmare started,” Mike Hermanstorfer told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “She started going numb … She closed her eyes to take a nap, and she wasn’t waking up.”

Tracy had gone into cardiac arrest according to Dr. Stephanie Martin, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the hospital. Medical staff quickly made the decision to perform an emergency Caesarean section, but the status of the baby wasn’t good either.

Dr. Martin told the Los Angeles Times: “She had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn’t breathing. The baby was … basically limp, with a very slow heart rate.”

“I was holding her hand when we realized she was gone,” Mike Hermanstorfer explained. “My entire life just rolled out.”

But then, the unexpected happened, surprising Dr. Martin.

“As soon as I delivered the baby, the mother’s heartbeat came back,” Martin told ABC. “Somewhere between four and five minutes she had been without heart rate and had stopped breathing a minute or two prior to her heart stopping.”

Additionally, doctors were able to resuscitate the baby while Mike Hermanstorfer held it in his hands. “His life began in my hands,” Hermanstorfer told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s a feeling like none other. Life actually began in the palm of my hands.”

Dr. Martin isn’t able to fully explain why Tracy went into cardiac arrest or how she revived. She theorizes that the process of delivering the baby may have removed a component of stress from Tracy Hermanstorfer’s body. Dr. Martin also noted that there may have been an obstruction of blood flow related to the pregnancy, and delivering the baby may have regulated the blood flow.

Both the mother and the baby, named Coltyn Mikel Hermanstorfer, have recovered without additional problems.