A woman in Texas, is sharing her truly harrowing birth story. The woman was pregnant with her first child when she got ill with what was a treatable medical issue. However, she says she was never properly treated for the illness, prolonging her symptoms. So, she felt that she needed to go a different route.
During her visit to a freestanding emergency room in Texas, the woman had a sudden premature birth. That would have been terrifying enough, but then her baby fell to the floor. And the way the ER handled it led to more devastating consequences.
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The woman had been feeling ill for some time.
In June, Makayla Thomas went to Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas three times in two weeks with abdominal pain. She told WFAA that doctors diagnosed her with a kidney infection on her third visit, which was caused by a “possibly untreated UTI,” according to her medical records.
“They discharged me, and said, ‘Just take the new antibiotics, and you’ll be fine,’” she shared.
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When she still felt ill, she came up with a new option.
Two days after being discharged from the hospital, Thomas was still in pain. But she didn’t return to the hospital. “I had been there three times,” she said.
Instead, Thomas, who was 26 weeks pregnant with her first child, took herself to a freestanding ER called Preston Hollow Emergency Room. “I thought I’m going to go to the emergency room, and hope they can do something about this pain and kidney infection,” she shared. “Never at that moment … did I think I was going through labor.”
What happened next is truly unbelievable.
WFAA obtained Thomas’ medical records from Preston Hollow, which confirm that she had abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. Thomas revealed she was alone in the room waiting for a doctor after being screened. She called it “scary.”
Suddenly, the pain got worse, and Thomas had the urge to push. “I was just like ‘Oh my God! Did I push out my baby?” she wondered.
She then explained that she pushed the baby out by herself, then her baby rolled off the bed and onto the floor. She then used her phone to record what happened next.
The whole thing was a harrowing experience.
“I’m going to have to pick up your child, OK?” a medical employee can be heard saying on the video, which WFAA shared.
It turned out that the baby was born en caul, which is the medical term for when a baby is born in its amniotic sac. “I was really in a state of shock,” she said.
“Is that the baby? Is it dead?” Thomas asks the medical staff member. “It appears to be … yeah,” the employee replied, adding, “It may have had some genetic abnormality or something, it appears so … but we’re still going to transfer you over just to get checked out and make sure everything, you know, came out.”
“It was just so nonchalant,” Thomas said. “They were examining her but not attending to her medically.”
Thomas made multiple videos to document the experience.
Thomas took several videos after the birth, documenting her care. Even though she was told she couldn’t film, she still tried to the best of her ability. In the videos, she is trying to figure out what is going on with her baby with minimal success. Eventually, a medical worker began performing chest compressions on her baby.
“He said there’s a faint heartbeat, I was like ‘Oh my God, she’s still here,’” she revealed.
Eventually, Thomas and her baby, a daughter named Heaven Grace, were transferred to Medical City Hospital. “I thought I was saying goodbye to my first child,” she told WFAA. “And now she’s alive.”
And while Thomas shared that she’s feeling blessed that her daughter is still alive, she’s still concerned. Heaven’s final prognosis isn’t clear yet, but her medical records say that “a lack of oxygen” is the cause of her coma, she’s in a “vegetative state,” and that she may never fully recover.
“We are just praying and praying and praying,” Thomas said. She and her husband have started a GoFundMe to help with medical bills.
