A mother has shared the harrowing story of how what should have been the happiest day of her life descended into a living nightmare when she nearly died from sepsis following childbirth due to a rare medical condition.
A Sudden Turn for the Worse
Ellie Marples, 32, from the UK, welcomed her son Albie via caesarean section and was enjoying her first moments of motherhood when she began to feel unwell. As she breastfed her newborn for the first time, she experienced dizziness and nausea before suddenly vomiting blood and losing consciousness.
"Everything turned black," Marples recalled. "I started panicking and then after that I don't remember anything."
Diagnosis and Emergency Treatment
Medical scans revealed Marples was suffering from multi-organ failure and sepsis caused by an amniotic fluid embolism during labour. This rare condition occurs when amniotic fluid enters the mother's bloodstream and represents the fifth leading cause of direct maternal death in childbirth.
"It should have been one of the happiest days of my life but it turned into a nightmare," she reflected. "I was in labour for about 22 hours. Eventually when I had the epidural I was 10cm dilated and I was pushing but he wasn't coming."
Critical Surgical Interventions
Doctors performed emergency surgery, removing 80 percent of her colon as a result of the sepsis. Marples was placed on life support and put into a medically induced coma to aid her recovery.
One week later, she required a life-saving hysterectomy after further tests revealed her womb and cervix were "fully septic from the inside out."
"They knew there was something else somewhere - some sort of infection but they weren't sure where," Marples explained. "They took me for a scan and found out that it was my womb, which was septic so they had to do a full hysterectomy and put me back under sedation."
Three Weeks in a Coma
Marples ultimately spent three weeks in the medically-induced coma. When she finally regained consciousness, the new mother - who can no longer have children as a result of the surgery - said she woke up feeling "lucky to be alive."
"I felt overwhelmed, I was just happy that I was still here... I was just grateful," she told the Daily Mail. "I felt really lucky, especially when you see the numbers of the survival rates from amniotic fluid embolism."
The Right People in the Right Place
Marples emphasised how crucial timing was to her survival: "I just felt so lucky to still be here and everyone was in the right place at the right time for me that night. Even staff have said to me that everyone was where they needed to be at that time."
"If any one person had been five minutes somewhere else then it would have been a completely different story for me. I was really lucky that I had the people around me at the time."
Ongoing Emotional Recovery
While Marples has physically recovered from the illness more than a year later, she acknowledges she is still mentally processing the traumatic experience.
"It's a lot to deal with. Obviously once you've dealt with the physical side of things, you just start thinking about things a lot more," she said.
Bonding Concerns with Newborn
The 32-year-old admitted the ordeal left her anxious about bonding with her son Albie, whom she was unable to hold for over a month while hospitalised.
"I was nervous because I didn't want to not bond with him but fortunately I was lucky and I picked up as if I'd been there from day one," she concluded. "It was a tough time, but we're all in a good place now."
Marples's story highlights the sudden and severe nature of childbirth complications, even when pregnancies proceed normally without prior warning signs.
