What they thought would be a routine delivery, quickly turned into a dire medical emergency. When Shelly Cawley went into labor doctors said she needed an emergency C-section.
She needed to be put under for the procedure and ended up having a blood clot burst during surgery.
This put Shelly into a coma. It had gotten so bad that she was put on “the last-chance ventilator” which was breathing for her. Doctors and nurses weren’t sure that she would make it.
“The doctors had done all they could and it was clear, they absolutely thought they were losing her at this point,” Shelly’s husband, Jeremy Cawley, told People.
But the medical staff at the North Carolina hospital weren’t about to give up just yet.
“We knew skin to skin contact is very beneficial to an infant so we thought why not try that for a mom,” nurse Ashley Manus told USA Today.
So, the medical staff decided to try it and undressed Shelly’s newborn infant Rylan and placed her on her comatose mother’s chest.
“I was hoping somewhere deep down, Shelly was still there and could feel her baby, hear her baby and her mother’s instincts would come out and she would realize, ‘This is where I need to be.’ ” Manus told People.
And that’s exactly what happened!
Baby Rylan quickly fell asleep on her mother’s chest so her dad and the nurses tried to tickle and even pinch the baby so she would make a noise to rouse her mother.
Eventually, they got a cry out of the baby after about 10 minutes and Shelly started to respond.
“We could see a spike in her vitals on the monitor. We knew that somewhere in there she was hearing her baby. Rylan saved her mom’s life,” Manus said. “It’s a complete miracle. There no other words to describe it.”
Shelly ended up making a full recovery!
“I think it amazing me that a baby so little can have such a huge impact,” she told USA Today.
And Shelly can’t wait to tell her daughter all about that big impact when she gets older.
“I just look at her now and think of the amazing bond we have. I can tell her when she grows up that she saved my life,” she told People.
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