An expectant mother in the U.K. who was declared clinically dead after her heart stopped functioning for 14 minutes at a hospital, woke up a day later to find out she had delivered a “miracle baby”.
Natasha Sokunbi, a 30-year-old mother from Stafford, England, and her unborn child were saved thanks to the timely effort of doctors at a hospital where she collapsed from cardiac arrest.
“They told me I’d been clinically dead for 14 minutes. They saved my baby and they saved me,” Sokunbi said.
Sokunbi was unwell for a couple of weeks because of a chest infection. On December 3, 2024, Sokunbi at 37 weeks of her pregnancy went to the emergency room of the University Hospitals of North Midlands with complaints of chest pains and difficulty breathing. While she was walking into the waiting room of the hospital, she suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed on her stomach.
The doctors immediately performed CPR on her and rushed her into an emergency C-section, where she delivered a baby girl, four minutes later. Doctors spent another 30 minutes resuscitating Sokunbi before she became stable and was put into an induced coma.
Sokunbi woke up the next day at the critical care unit of the hospital to realize that she had delivered her second daughter, Beau, whom she describes as a “miracle baby.”
“My heart wasn’t beating when the doctors delivered Beau. I was basically dead when they pulled her out. One team of medics was 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’,” Sokunbi said.
Sokunbi has recovered and is back at home with Beau and 14-month-old daughter, Love, after spending three weeks in the hospital. During her stay, she had an ICD heart-starter device inserted to prevent another cardiac arrest in the future.
“Now I’m much more appreciative of life and won’t take anything for granted ever again,” Sokunbi said, thanking very specially, the doctors who saved the lives.
“The teamwork required to save two lives was absolutely incredible. This was fortunately a very rare occurrence, but everyone involved responded quickly and appropriately, even though it was the very end of the night shift for many. They knew their roles and applied their knowledge and skills to deliver the best possible outcome for both mother and baby,” said Dr Simon Constable, Chief Executive at the University Hospitals of North Midlands in a news release.
