Mum-to-be fell ill at baby shower and ended up in coma

A mum-to-be said she was told she only had a cold before she fell ill at her baby shower and ended up on life support.

Helen Bennett, from Bromborough in Merseyside, was 27 weeks pregnant when she went to her GP concerned about a chest infection.

The 29-year-old said she thought she was "just being a little bit dramatic". But, after having difficulty breathing at her baby shower on 2 November, she was rushed to hospital with pneumonia.

Two weeks later, she was put on life support before an emergency C-section that ultimately saved her daughter's life.

"I thought I was being dramatic," Helen told BBC Radio Merseyside. "That this is what a cold in your third trimester must feel like."

Helen, who was expecting her first baby, said she was advised to "go home, have some rest and take some paracetamol" when she went to her GP with her initial concerns.

A couple of days later, just hours after she got home from her baby shower, Helen was urgently taken to Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral.

"I just couldn't breathe and I said to my husband, James, 'I can't breathe, you need to call 999, this isn't right'.

"So an ambulance came out and by this point I've settled down again a bit and I think I'm being a bit dramatic, maybe I'm overreacting again?

"When they turned on the blue lights and the sirens, and I remember thinking 'This might be a little bit more serious than I initially thought it was'."

When Helen arrived at the hospital, she found out she had pneumonia and an issue with her kidney function.

"I was told my baby was ok and as a mother, that's all I wanted to hear," she recalled.

Helen said she was treated for pneumonia and put on kidney dialysis for a couple of days before being sent home again.

But just days later, Helen said she knew something was not right.

"I started to feel a bit off again," she explained. "I told my husband I couldn't walk up the stairs. I was in agony. I couldn't breathe. I hadn't felt the baby move all day."

Helen was rushed back to hospital where she discovered she had a fungal infection in her lungs.

"The last thing I really remember was being back in the same hospital room as before, shouting, 'I can't breathe', 'I can't breathe'.

"It got overwhelming. I ripped an oxygen mask off my face and then, I don't know. I woke up four days later."

Helen was later told her heartbeat had dropped to 20 beats per minute and she had been put on a ventilator in an attempt to keep both her and her baby stable.

"After a few hours, they told my mum and my husband 'she's critical but she is stable'," she recalled.

Later that night, Helen said her blood pressure had "absolutely hit the floor".

She said: "The baby had stopped moving, they had to turn off all the dialysis, reduce the sedation - my husband's in a panic, he comes rushing in, they take me down for surgery."

Cordelia was born at just 29 weeks, weighing only two pounds three ounces - less than one kilogram.

Helen said she has "absolutely no recollection" beyond her initial arrival to the hospital that day.

"I thought maybe with time it would come back, but nothing," she said. "It's a bit sad really.

"They brought me round to remove the tube four days later and as they pulled the ventilator tube out they told me that I'd had a daughter. They had told me before this, but nothing sank in.

"I jolted upright and I felt where I'd had the Caesarean and I felt this pain and I thought, 'I'm not pregnant anymore. I don't know where my daughter is. I don't know what's happening'."

Helen was later taken in a wheelchair to see her daughter, who was in the neonatal unit at the hospital where she would remain for the first 45 days of her life.

"She was tiny - the same size as my hand... I mean I've never seen a child that small," Helen said.

"You see it on TV but you just never comprehend that that actually does happen.

"Holding her, it was like being completed."

Helen said that now, seven-and-a-half months later, she and Cordelia are doing well.

"I can't believe she's seven months old already - she's doing amazing," the new mum said. "She's blowing everyone's expectations."

Helen said she now wanted to thank every staff member who helped save her and her daughter.

"Not all heroes wear capes," she said. "Every single doctor, nurse, the cleaners, the porters. They were just incredible and honestly they saved my life and they saved my daughter's life."

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