New mum's heartbreaking three words just seconds before she unexpectedly died
A new mum who "smiled" and said "I'm so excited" as she delivered her baby shocked medics after she suddenly passed away, an inquest has heard.
Bernadette Horsey, 31, unexpectedly went into cardiac arrest after she welcomed her newborn son Tim at the Royal Derby Hospital. He was born in a planned caesarean section on January 19 last year.
Derby Coroner's Court previously heard how doctors had "no concerns" before she endured a "profound, catastrophic collapse" just seconds after her delivery. On Thursday, Dr Rebecca Robinson, who delivered Tim, said the operation was routine until the mum took a turn for the worse.
She shared the intimate moment between Mrs Horsey and her husband, Aaron, as the screens came down so they could watch their son being delivered. Dr Robison, of University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, recalled: "I remember hearing Bernadette saying 'I'm so excited' as I was delivering him, so from my point of view I had no concerns, and was about to drop the screen."
Aaron Horsey and son Tim (PA)The consultant obstetrician continued: "I saw Aaron and Bernadette both smile, and look at each other and smile, and I heard Bernadette say 'It's a boy'. At the point Tim was born, she was in theatre, she was there and she was well. What happened next happened very suddenly." The court heard on Wednesday from consultant anaesthetist, Dr Martyn Traves, who was also involved in the operation and present in theatre. Dr Traves said he also had no concerns until shortly after Tim's birth, when he noticed Mrs Horsey turn pale and become tonic, meaning her body was beginning to enter a seizure state. She was declared to have gone into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 11:45 am.
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
Dr Traves told the coroner that he was "certain" she had suffered an amniotic fluid embolus, which caused her to enter cardiac arrest within seconds. Dr Robinson estimated that she and her colleagues noticed the change in Mrs Horsey's health in around 10 seconds and agreed with Dr Traves' conclusion that an embolus had caused her death, describing the incident as "absolutely horrible". She said: "I heard Dr Traves say 'she is going tonic' and at the same time as that heard people saying 'Bernadette' and her not responding. That must have been the exact moment when things went from entirely well to catastrophically different, a catastrophic physical change was witnessed at that point.
Bernadette turned to Aaron and smiled before her death (Aaron Horsey / BPM Media)"The way that it happened, the clinical constellation of symptoms and signs of how it happened so suddenly, the timing of it [after] a baby being delivered, was classic of an amniotic fluid embolism. That is what clinically I believe was the cause. It was absolutely textbook presentation." An embolus can occur when amniotic fluid gets into the maternal bloodstream, which Dr Robinson said in rare cases can put strain on the heart and in Bernadette's case caused her to go into cardiac arrest. She said deaths from such an embolus were rare and science had not yet established how amniotic fluid enters the bloodstream, but added it did not always cause harm or death.
"Other people can bleed uncontrollably or have shortness of breath," she added. "In Bernadette's case, the first sign of anything going wrong was a cardiac arrest. There are no known risk factors and no ways of predicting an amniotic fluid embolus. Everything was routine up until the moment of the cardiac arrest." When asked by Louise Pinder, assistant coroner for Derby and Derbyshire, whether she felt there were any missed opportunities to save Mrs Horsey, Dr Robinson replied: "No, I don't think that there were." The inquest, expected to conclude on Friday, continues.
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