A hospital consultant who gave birth to twins while she was in a coronavirus coma has described the delivery of the babies as a “miracle”.
Perpetual Uke, a rheumatology consultant, was taken to Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham when she contracted Covid-19 in April and was placed on a ventilator in a medically induced coma when her condition deteriorated.
Doctors decided to deliver the babies by caesarean section in case their mother did not recover. Her due date had been mid-July, but the babies were delivered at just 26 weeks.
But when Uke woke from the coma and could not see her bump, she feared that she had lost the babies.
“I couldn’t see my bump and I thought my babies were gone,” she told Metro. “It’s just a miracle what happened, to come out of this.
“We are all doing very well. I remember getting ill and the ambulance coming to take me away, and then I was put in a coma.
“Coming out of the coma was the worst aspect. I had nightmares. I was delusional, I couldn’t see my bump and I thought my babies were gone and all my family had died.
“It was a very, very worrying time for my husband and kids and, even after I woke up, I couldn’t see my babies for more than two weeks.”
The babies, a girl named Sochika Palmer, and a boy called Osinachi Pascal, weighed only 765g (27oz) and 850g (30oz) at birth. They were taken to a neonatal intensive care unit at Birmingham Women’s hospital while Uke recovered.
Uke’s worried husband, Matthew, had their prayers answered 16 days later when she came out of her coma and began her road to recovery, she told Metro.
The Birmingham City Hospital doctor has since been reunited with the babies, her husband, and her two other children – Nnamdi Ronald, 12, and Chisimdi Claire, 11.
“Coming home was the real healing point for me,” she said. “The family are now all together, and we’re all very, very happy.”
