Two Births in One Day
July 07, 2026
A rare and sudden complication stopped Hasna’s heart moments after her daughter was born. The Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare team that brought her back gave her family what they now call a second birth – her own.
The last thing Hasna remembers is a strange sensation – something rising into her throat. She turned to tell her husband. Then everything went dark.
Moments earlier, her daughter had been born by cesarean section at Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare (JHAH) – a delivery the family had planned for with care. It was Hasna’s second pregnancy, and a history of placental complications had kept her under the watch of a high-risk pregnancy team throughout. The pregnancy itself, she says, had been smooth and unremarkable. “My doctor reassured me that everything was being carefully planned for delivery,” Hasna said. “I wasn’t particularly worried.”
What no one could predict was what came next. Seconds after that sensation in her throat, Hasna went into cardiac arrest on the operating table. She had suffered an amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) – one of the most sudden and least predictable emergencies in childbirth, in which amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream and triggers a rapid, life-threatening reaction. A 2019 PLOS Medicine multi-country study found that up to 41% of women with AFE either died or suffered permanent neurological injury.
Hasna’s husband was asked to step out. Inside, a focused multidisciplinary team moved at once – obstetricians, anesthesiologists, midwives, nurses, specialists in critical care, interventional radiology and the hematology and transfusion service – performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and working to control the bleeding and vital organ dysfunction that AFE causes. The emergency was severe enough that the surgical team could not close the incision straight away, as the repair was completed in stages over the days that followed.
Hasna remembers none of it. “This is what my husband and the doctors later told me,” she said. Though she slowly regained consciousness, she remained disoriented, drifting through a strange, fluid state of perception. “I was living in an entirely different reality, and what I do remember was mostly imagined,” she said.
Around the seventh day, awareness started to return – and with it, a frightening gap. She could not remember giving birth. “I kept telling everyone, ‘I don’t have a baby,’” she recalled. “It was a very difficult feeling.”
Then the team brought her newborn daughter to her.
“When I finally saw her, I felt like everything suddenly returned to normal,” Hasna said. “I realized that God had saved both me and my baby. I felt that I had been given a second chance at life.” Her family, she says, found their own way to describe what happened: “There were two births that day – the birth of my baby, and my own rebirth.”
For Hasna’s husband, what stood out was the care that went beyond the strictly medical. When Hasna’s mother needed to join her daughter from abroad in the midst of the Hajj travel season – a typically challenging time to arrange a visa – a member of the JHAH team, Dr. Tammam Abu Al-Hamayel, helped the family secure the documentation. Dr. Fahd Al Mulhim arranged for the newborn to visit Hasna in intensive care, so she could see for herself that her daughter was healthy. And from the very beginning, the family says, the consultant leading her case, Dr. Abrar Alsadah, had explained every risk and every step clearly.
“I never felt abandoned or uninformed,” her husband said. “Their communication and compassion made an incredible difference.” He returns, time and again, to a single word: trust. “The trust between our family and the medical team became a key factor in Hasna’s recovery.”
“This success story is more than a clinical achievement,” said Dr. Hanan Al Shaikh, Chair of Women and Child’s Health Department. “It reflects the power of dedicated professionals working together when it matters most. It reminds us that preparation, teamwork, and compassion can make all the difference in saving a life.”
Today, Hasna has nearly completed that journey. The pain is gone, and the lingering lapses in concentration and memory have steadily eased. She is, she mentions almost in passing, planning a trip – a change of scenery, and a quiet measure of how far she has come. When she still has questions, her doctors reassure her that she can live exactly as any other mother would.
Her message to other women facing difficult pregnancies is to not be afraid. “Women who are expecting shouldn’t spend this special time living in fear,” she said. “They should enjoy it and make the most of it.”
Hasna’s survival – without the lasting harm that AFE so often leaves behind – reflects the kind of fast, coordinated, multidisciplinary response JHAH has built across its specialties, several of which are available in only a limited number of centers in the Kingdom.
And, according to her family, it is just as much a story about people who refused to let go.
“It felt like receiving another opportunity to live life fully,” Hasna said, “and I appreciate every moment.”