A mother has met her newborn baby girl for the first time, seven weeks after giving birth to her.
Colvina Jolin from Portsmouth, England, suffered a brain haemorrhage that sent her into a coma for three months.
She had been given just a ten per cent change of survival while her premature baby, Maia, was resuscitated twice.
“It’s a miracle we both survived,” she told Daily Mail. “When I came round, I instinctively knew that I had given birth and my baby was all right.
“Holding her for the first time was wonderful. To feel her close to me… I was overwhelmed.”
The 28-year-old was doing housework when she passed out following an intense headache, with doctors later discovering she had suffered an aneurism which led to a stroke.
Dr Andy Eynon, who performed emergency brain surgery on Colvina to relieve the build-up of “massive pressure”, said they were fearful they would lose both mother and child, admitting they had “never seen anyone survive this”.
Colvina’s mother Sue Walder said her daughter would regularly move her hand, as if rubbing her pregnant belly.
“It is as if she still sensed she was pregnant,” Mrs Walder said.
Dr Eynon said it was “an incredibly rare event” for a woman in a coma to deliver a baby.
He said, “In my 13 years of doing neuro-intensive care at our hospital there have been just three cases.”
Maia is now almost one and hasn’t suffered any long-term health problems, however Colvina is still undergoing rehabilitation.
“I know it sounds stupid but I never remember not having her. It’s as if she was always there, even though I was in a coma when she was born,” Colvina said.
