Christmas miracle? Woman in labor and baby face death, revived

Unlike the rest of our Christmas miracles that probably involved still-available Snuggies at the local Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve, Tracey Hermanstorfer’s version involved a Lazarus-like twist that saw both she and her baby dramatically revived from death.

Hermanstorfer, a 35-year-old woman from Colorado, arrived at the hospital on Christmas Eve with husband Mike due to what appeared to be a normal case of being in labor. During the preparatory stages of the delivery, however, Hermanstorfer began to feel “sleepy,” laying back in bed. Then things took a terrifying turn:

“She literally stopped breathing and her heart stopped,” said her husband.

Medical staff tried in vain to revive Hermanstorfer, but were unsuccessful. Her husband was informed that an emergency c-section would be performed to attempt to save their son. The child was born unresponsive, not breathing and with a “very slow heartbeat.” But efforts from the medical staff present managed to resuscitate the child, and along with that came another surprise. Tracy Hermanstorfer had begun breathing again:

“My legs went out from underneath me,” (Mike) Hermanstorfer said. “I had everything in the world taken from me, and in an hour and a half I had everything given to me.”

Dr. Stephanie Martin, director of maternal fetal medicine at Memorial Hospital, has difficulty explaining exactly how the woman’s vital signs returned:

“As soon as I delivered the baby, the mother’s heartbeat came back,” Martin said. “Somewhere between four and five minutes she had been without heart rate and had stopped breathing a minute or two prior to her heart stopping.”

While the Hermanstorfers are religious and attribute the miracle to divine intervention, Dr. Martin says she’ll “take help wherever (she) can get it.” The Hermanstorfers named the child Coltyn Mikel Hermanstorfer, and mother and child were released from the hospital Monday.