A Christmas Miracle

Mother Baby Die and Revive

From the Herald Sun of Australia this American Miracle at Christmas

A FATHER is claiming a Christmas miracle after his wife and newborn baby apparently came back from the dead.

Mike Hermanstorfer told how his wife Tracy went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing in a US hospital delivery room on Christmas Eve.

Doctors performed an emergency caesarean section to try to save the baby's life but then had to give Mr Hermanstorfer the heartbreaking news that his son had not survived either.

As the father held his son in his hands, he felt the boy begin to move.

And at the same time Mrs Hermanstorfer, 33, began to breathe again.

"My legs went out from under me," her husband said. "I had everything in the world taken from me and then, suddenly, everything given to me. It was the hand of God."

Doctors at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said there was no logical explanation for the recovery of the mother or her baby.

"She was dead," maternal foetal medicine specialist Dr Stephanie Martin said. "She had no heartbeat, no breathing, no blood pressure. She was as grey as her sweat suit and there were no signs of life.

"The baby was basically limp with a very slow heart rate. We did a thorough evaluation and can't find anything that explains why this happened."

Mr Hermanstorfer said his wife had begun to feel sleepy as she was being prepared for the delivery.

Doctors and nurses began CPR in an attempt to restart her heart. Mr Hermanstorfer recalls a doctor telling him: "We have been unable to revive her and we're going to take your son out."

They began a caesarean section to remove the baby and did not use anaesthetic on the assumption that the mother was dead.

Some of the medical team stayed with Mrs Hermanstorfer to continue efforts to resuscitate her, while others began massaging baby Coltyn.

Mrs Hermanstorfer said she recalled nothing of the incident. She plans to tell Coltyn about his birth when he is old enough to understand: "I'll tell him that he had a tough time coming into this world; that he's my miracle baby."