Woman 'unable to have children' has baby weeks before surrogate in terrifying birth
Rachel Storch is aiming to raise awareness about a rare complication she experienced while giving birth to a baby she'd previously been told she'd never be able to have.
The birth story is miraculous in more ways than one.
Storch, from Chicago, was giving birth to her daughter, Sydney, in April of this year when she suddenly felt as though she was unable to breathe - and it turned out to be an amniotic fluid embolism.
The 36-year-old alerted the healthcare staff and the urgency ramped up a few notches.
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Nadia Swormstedt, a labour and delivery nurse at Endeavor Health Evanston Hospital, told NBC Chicago: "When she started pushing, the baby was just about to be delivered, and she told us that she doesn't feel well. And then immediately after that, she lost consciousness."
Storch's circulation started to fail but incredibly, the professionals were able to safely retrieve her baby.
They then started to perform CPR on Storch in a frantic attempt to bring her back to full health.
Maternal foetal medicine specialist Dr David Ouyang said: "That didn't work well enough, and you needed to incorporate this tool called ECMO, which is essentially a way of bypassing the heart and lungs and using the machines to do the work of the heart and lungs."
Storch then spent two weeks in an intensive care unit.
The causing factor of her embolism was likely due to 'amniotic fluid [entering] into the patient's circulation', Dr Ouyang said.
He estimates that they occur 'in about one in every 30,000 deliveries'.
Storch went on to recover as a result of medications and physical therapy.
Her recovery isn't the only miraculous part of the chaotic birth.
Storch said: "I was told I wasn’t able to carry again after my first daughter, Olivia, and so we moved forward with a surrogate. And the week we were transferring to the surrogate, I found out I was pregnant."
A fortnight after Sydney's arrival into the world, her surrogate gave birth to her sister, Remy.
Storch added: "The reason I'm here is because the doctors responded so quickly and knew exactly what they were doing, which I'm very fortunate for."
They now make up a happy family-of-five.
Swormstedt chimed in: "I've just been thinking about her every single day. Knowing now that she's at home with her two kids, three kids, actually she has three, makes me so incredibly happy."
Kya Buller