Women giving birth while in a coma is a rare event but not an impossible one. In the past year, as the pandemic infected and killed many people, many reports of pregnant women battling COVID-19 fell into a coma but have given birth to healthy babies.
Thirty seven year old first-time mom Cristina Rosi from Monte San Savino, Tuscany, was seven months pregnant when she had a heart attack and fell into a coma in July last year.
But 10 months later, she awakened and found herself a first-time mother to a daughter she gave birth to while in a coma, MailOnline reported.
Italian Woman Wakes Up After 10 Months in Coma
After almost a year of being in a coma, Rosi finally woke up. Her husband, 42-year-old Gabriele Succi, said that his wife's first word after she awoke from her coma was "Mamma."
"It's a real joy after so much suffering. Even the doctors in the room have confirmed that Cristina has said her first word," Succi told the Italian newspaper La Nazione.
Rosi has been transferred to a clinic in Austria, where she is expected to receive care from specialists and undergo a neurological rehabilitation program.
Succi said that the nurses have already removed his wife's tracheostomy tube to allow Rosi to breathe by herself. He added that Rosi can now not only breathe independently, but she can also take a swallow by herself.
Her husband considered her waking up as a miracle after being in a coma for many months. Compared to the previous months, Succi said that his wife now is hardly recognizable and that she is more relaxed.
According to IOL, she gave birth to their daughter, Caterina, via emergency Caesarean while Rosi was still in a coma and suffering from brain damage.
Can A Woman Give Birth While In A Coma?
In 2019, a woman in Arizona who was in a coma or a vegetative state for 14 years gave birth, and no one even knew she was pregnant. Authorities arrested the 36-year-old nurse, who is one of her care providers in the hospital. He was charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of vulnerable adult abuse, Yahoo! reported.
Dr. Deborah Feldman, director for maternal-fetal medicine at Hartford HealthCare Medical Group, explained that what happened to the Arizona woman shows that the patient had normally functioning organs to grow a full-term baby.
Feldman added that although it is unusual that no one noticed that the Arizona woman was pregnant, some women never got prenatal care but most of the time give birth to healthy and robust babies. It is as if nature has taken care of it.
However, it also comes with the same risks as with healthy women who, for example, have diabetes and hypertension. Patients like her who do not move do not have any caloric expenditure, but they also do not eat like normal pregnant women.
"My guess is that she probably had a feeding tube. That really helps with the nutritional support, and babies tend to grow well even with just that," Feldman said, CNN reported.
When an unconscious patient gives birth and unable to push, she is administered medications to strengthen the contractions and does not have to do anything. Sometimes a Caesarean also applies, but Feldman said that it is riskier for the mother because it is a surgical operation.
Recovery time is the same as for a normal operation, but with a slightly increased risk of infection, Feldman said.
RELATED ARTICLE: COVID-19 Positive Nurse From Ohio Gave Birth via Cesarian Section While in Coma; What Happened to the Baby?
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