Mail reports Christmas Miracle: Mother and baby both died

Below is one of the increasing number of bizarre stories surrounding unexplained events in medicine. Before, we charismatics would paint a picture as if this sort of thing ONLY happened to Christians. And you know God's life is just not that watertight. Extraordinary things happen all over the place, often in answer to deep intense cries from the heart. We have only to read about what happened when Ishmael and his mum were thrown out by Abraham, and God sent an angel to them. But I do have to say, as Christians' general level of faith is rising in the earth, doctors and nurses all over the place are growing increasingly baffled by some of the things that are occurring.
Today's Daily Mail reads
Christmas miracle: The mother and baby who BOTH died during labour... then came back to life
By Richard Luscombe    Original here               
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1239334/Mothers-breathing-stops-heart-fails--just-long-birth.html

Last updated at 8:01 PM on 30th December 2009

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 just after being wheeled into a 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.
But as the sobbing father held his tiny son in his hands, he felt the boy slowly begin to move.


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

Her husband said: ‘My legs went out from under me. 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 sudden recovery of the mother or her baby.

Dr Stephanie Martin, a maternal foetal medicine specialist, said: ‘She was dead. 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, 37, said: ‘We are both believers but this right here, even to a non-believer, you explain to me how this happened. There is no other explanation. Half of my family was lying right there in front of me in my hands, there’s no other way to say it, but dead.’


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

‘She literally stopped breathing and her heart stopped. I was holding her hand when we realised she was gone,’ he said. ‘I lost all feeling. Once her heartbeat stopped, I felt like mine did too.’

Doctors and nurses began CPR in an attempt to restart her heart, but 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.


After the caesarean, some of the medical team stayed with Mrs Hermanstorfer to continue efforts to resuscitate her, while other doctors began massaging the baby, named Coltyn, as he lay in his father’s arms in what they thought was a vain hope of reviving him.

‘They handed him to me, he was absolutely lifeless,’ Mr Hermanstorfer said. ‘But then they actually got him started right there in my hands. That’s a feeling like no other. Life actually began in the palm of my hands.’

Dr Martin said delivering the baby could have relieved the mother’s body of the stress of labour or unblocked previously clogged blood flow to the rest of her body. Mrs Hermanstorfer, whose heart was said to have stopped for about four minutes, said she recalled nothing of the incident.

She plans to tell Coltyn about his traumatic birth when he is old enough to understand.

‘I’ll tell him everything. That he had a tough time coming into this world, that he’s my miracle baby,’ she said.