Mom Whose Heart Has Stopped Successfully Recovers And Gives Birth To Her Baby
This North Carolina couple received the shock of their lifetimes. After taking the dog out for a walk, the husband heard some strange noises upstairs. He went to investigate and found something extremely disturbing.
The morning of July 2 was a seemingly ordinary North Carolina morning for Chris Severt. After returning from a morning walk with his dog, “[I] came back in, sat down in the chair and heard a weird noise coming from upstairs,” Chris said, as reported by azfamily. He hurried up the stairs and opened the bedroom door to find his wife, Mindy McLain Severt, unconscious on the floor. She was grasping her chest, and Chris could see she was not breathing.
He immediately started performing CPR. There was little time to spare; the fate of his future family was lying on the ground—Mindy was 18 weeks pregnant. Unable to revive Mindy, Chris called 911. Minutes later, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) arrived with an automated external defibrillator.
The technicians stabilized Mindy’s pulse just enough for a life-flight to CMC’s Sanger Heart Clinic in Charlotte, NC.
After arriving at the hospital, doctors promptly went to work.
They were stumped as to what caused the seemingly healthy 29-year-old’s heart to stop. Doctors lowered Mindy’s body temperature to 92 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) and put her on a ventilator. For the next 24 hours, Mindy remained sedated while the heart clinic staff tried to decipher what went wrong.
Doctors soon discovered Mindy had QT syndrome—a condition where the heart pauses much longer than usual. To fix Mindy’s terrifying ailment, she required two open-heart surgeries. First, doctors inserted a temporary pacemaker, and the second operation replaced the temporary pacemaker with a permanent one.
Mindy’s life was saved thanks to the valiant efforts of the heart clinic staff, but the fate of their first, unborn child was uncertain. All the doctors could say was the baby had a heartbeat and managed to survive the harrowing ordeal.
The following months were filled with stress-inducing tests to determine the condition of their unborn child.
Mindy and Chris’s delight was palpable after learning their child’s development was proceeding at a regular rate with no apparent signs of abnormalities. On Dec. 1, Mindy gave birth to a beautiful, and perfectly healthy, Sawyer Severt.
“It was honestly the greatest feeling you could ever imagine,” Chris said in reaction to the birth of his healthy, firstborn baby boy. It appears this couple received the best Christmas present any expectant parent could ask for—a happy and healthy family.