Declared “clinically dead” after giving birth, she wakes up having forgotten everything

Already parents of a 4-year-old boy, Marisa and Dylan Christie conceived triplets after ovarian stimulation. On August 21, 2024, when the mother-to-be was 33 weeks pregnant, they went to Memorial Hermann the Woodlands Medical Center in Houston (United States) to give birth by planned cesarean section. Dr. Amber Samuel successfully delivered the three children, who are placed on their mother’s stomach. But, suddenly, she has an attack: “My arms flew away, and that’s when my heart stopped,” she tells Today.

The mother was “clinically dead” for 45 minutes

This young mother, aged 30, was the victim of a rare complication, but which can have serious consequences: an amniotic embolism. According to the Mayo Clinic, this happens “when fluids that surround the baby during pregnancy, called amniotic fluid, or fetal materials like fetal cells enter the pregnant person’s bloodstream.” It was the anesthesiologist who attended the birth, Dr Ricardo Mora, who first understood what was happening, having witnessed the same phenomenon during another birth 15 years earlier.

Questioned by Today, he explains that his patient was “grey” and that this complication is “fatal in 80% to 85% of cases”. It started when Dr Samuel was removing the placenta, as is usually the case, and the medical teams immediately started resuscitation. “She had lost what we consider to be all of her blood volume.”adds the anesthesiologist. The medical team performed a transfusion: “So, for 45 minutes, she was clinically dead. We can do the best resuscitation gestures in the world, if we don’t have enough blood in the brain, essentially [les patients] are alive but with brain damage. I needed her to live to raise her children. So it was something personal for me.” Finally, doctors were able to resuscitate Marisa Christie and the transfusion was a success. However, the bleeding was so bad that, even though they did everything they could to avoid having to remove her uterus, they ultimately had to perform a hysterectomy.

Mom wakes up forgetting after giving birth

After giving birth, Marisa Christie remained unconscious for a week. When she woke up, she had forgotten everything that had happened to her. So it was Dylan who reminded him that their three daughters, named Charlotte, Kendall and Collins, had been born. “My husband was like, ‘Hey, so we had the babies. They are healthy and doing well.” I was absolutely terrified… How could I have forgotten having my babies?” remembers the young mother.

When she was able to see her daughters after waking up, it was like a first meeting for her, since she had forgotten the birth. Marisa Christie explains that it all seemed “unreal”. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know these babies. It’s very weird. It seems like they’re not real. They look like they’re not mine. It took a little while to have that connection with her.”she confides. After spending nine weeks convalescing in the maternity ward, she was able to return home with Dylan. A week later, Charlotte joined them, and Kendall and Collins were released from the hospital shortly after. Their mother says she feels very different from the person she was before giving birth: “I feel disconnected from who I was before. I’ve become stronger, but I’ve also changed so much because going through a traumatic experience like this changes your outlook on things. It’s rare, but it happens . There are so many miracles that led me to live instead of die, and we are grateful.”