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Christmas Miracle? “Dead” Mom and baby come back to life
Tracy Hermanstorfer was in labor on Christmas eve at Memorial Hospital in Colorado, when something went terribly wrong. She went into cardiac arrest, her heart stopped beating, and her breathing ceased. Medical staff tried to revive her for several minutes, without any success.
Her husband Mike told CBS news affiliate KKTV that “I sat there with my wife’s hand in mine, ice cold.” Dr. Stephanie Martin, director of maternal fetal medicine at the hospital was direct in her assessment, telling KKTV that, “She was dead.”
Assuming that to be the case, the doctors made the quick decision to perform an emergency cesarean section in the hope of saving her baby. But the baby too, was not breathing, and was feared to be still-born.
Suddenly, Tracey’s heartbeat returned. The doctors immediately wheeled her into surgery to finish the C-section. While they operated, the staff continued trying to revive her baby. And just as suddenly as Tracy had “come back,” the baby started breathing. The couple later named him Coltyn Mikel Hermanstorfer.
The doctors are still uncertain what caused Tracey’s initial condition – and what reversed it. Dr. Martin, in an interview with Colorado’s Gazette, said that cardiac arrest in pregnancy is very unlikely, but unlikelier still is both mother and baby surviving it.
As for Mike Hermanstorfer, he doesn’t seem to need a medical explanation. “There’s only one explanation for having either one of them, let along both of them here,” he said to ABC News. “It’s just an absolute miracle.”
Source: ABC News
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