I was told by my midwife that my baby and I were going to die…then I woke up in the delivery room alone

A Sydney mum has shared the terrifying moment she woke up alone after being told she and her baby were going to die during labour. 

Ruby Nichols, 25, suffered a placental abruption while giving birth to her three-year-old son Kobi, and after being put to sleep while doctors rushed to save her life, she woke up alone, believing her baby had died.

The single mum, who lives in Sutherland Shire, 26km southwest of Sydney’s CBD, recalled her traumatic birth story to Daily Mail Australia.  

‘When I was 41 weeks and five days, I went into labour,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t experienced any Braxton Hicks throughout my whole pregnancy so I wasn’t sure if I was in labour at first. 

‘But within 20 minutes my contractions were a minute long and like five minutes apart. They were strong and fast.’

Ms Nichols remembered asking herself: ‘How am I going to survive this?’ 

After getting to the hospital, the mum recalled holding onto the sink in the bathroom and swaying back and forth when the midwife came to check on her son’s heartbeat. 

‘We could hear it was non-existent and my mum’s face just went white, the midwife’s face went white and she just hit the emergency buzzer,’ she said.

Ms Nichols suddenly felt an immense release of pressure and assumed her waters had broken, but when she looked down all she could see was blood. 

Doctors told Ms Nichols she needed a Caesarean and despite initially wanting a water birth, all she cared about was making sure she and her baby were safe.  

She explained her son’s dad, who she is no longer in a relationship with, was getting ready to come into theatre while she was having her blood pressure measured and a cannula inserted into her arm. 

‘I was still having contractions at this point and I started feeling really dizzy and I couldn’t see the room straight and my arm was burning,’ she recalled. 

‘My arm was swollen and pulsating, and then I was told my blood pressure was dropping and they needed to move along quickly.

‘I just wanted my partner and I kept asking, “Can I please have him, where is he?” And then this nurse turned to me and said, “You and your son are both going to die”.

Terrifyingly, this is the last thing Ms Nichols remembers before being put to sleep.

‘The hardest thing for me was that I woke up in a room by myself, all I could remember was being told that my son and I were going to die, but obviously I woke up so I knew I was alive but I have there’s no baby,’ she said. 

The mum explained she struggled to speak when she first woke up as she had been given ketamine during the birth to sedate her. 

‘I was trying to scream, “Where is my baby?” but I couldn’t vocalise anything,’ she said.

After ‘what felt like 15 minutes’ she ‘started yelling’ when she saw a nurse walk by asking, ‘Is he dead?’

Ms Nichols was told her baby was upstairs with his dad. 

‘I remember losing it and saying, “Take me to my baby right now”,’ the mum recalled, noting she was told she had to wait for a porter to collect her, but she refused to wait a second longer. 

‘I told her, “I will literally rip this catheter out of myself and walk up there by myself, take me to my baby right now”. 

The single mum noted from the time her son was born to the time she met him was around four hours. 

‘The recovery nurses were incredible, they were really great and supportive, but the thing that always upset me the most was that I woke up by myself and they did not attempt to do any skin-to-skin, which is so important,’ she added.

She said she’s ‘forever grateful’ to the medical team, but the ‘trauma’ and ‘fear that I had woke up without him was so terrifying’. 

‘If a nurse is going to vocalise something as horrible as that or even the trauma in general then someone should’ve made sure when I woke up I had a familiar face with me,’ Ms Nichols said.

After sharing her story with her midwife in the months following the birth, Ms Nichols was encouraged to make a complaint to the hospital. 

‘I am fully aware that when you are in a state of emergency and it is life or death, you’re not thinking how can I comfort this person? You’re just trying to get them to live and their baby to live.

‘The part that I was raising my concern with was the fact that I woke up by myself in a pitch-black room with no familiar face after I’ve been told we weren’t going to make it.’

The Sydney hospital reached out to Ms Nichols and apologised, adding that they have taken her concerns on board.