Shelly Cawley with husband Jeremy and daughter Rylan a year after her crying baby helped wake her from a coma. (Photo: Facebook/Shelly Ann Cawley)
A year after her newborn daughter helped wake her from a coma, a North Carolina mom is celebrating how far they both have come.
Last September, Shelly Cawley went into labor and had to undergo an emergency C-section. “I clearly remember lying on the stretcher to take me back to the operating room, and I was crying. I was telling the doctors I was scared that I wasn’t going to wake up from my surgery,” she told WCNC.
Shelly’s fear almost came true. Though doctors delivered a healthy baby girl, a blood clot broke loose during Shelly’s surgery and sent the new mom into a coma. Hours later, she still hadn’t woken up. “The doctors had done all they could, and it was clear they absolutely thought they were losing her at this point,” Jeremy Cawley, Shelly’s husband, toldPeople.
But a nurse at Carolinas HealthCare System NorthEast, where Shelly was being treated, had one final idea. “We’re a big proponent of skin-to-skin [contact]. We believe it has great benefits for the mom and the baby, and we just thought it can’t hurt, might as well give it a try,” nurse Ashley Manus told People. “I was hoping somewhere deep down Shelly was still there and could feel her baby, hear her baby, and her mother’s instincts would come out and she would realize, ‘This is where I need to be.’”
Shelly Cawley in a coma, top, after undergoing an emergency C-section. Above, with her now 1-year-old daughter, Rylan. (Photo: Facebook/Shelly Ann Cawley)
When Manus and another nurse first put baby Rylan on her unconscious mother’s chest, the newborn was so at home she fell asleep. But with some prodding, Jeremy and the nurses were able to wake her, hoping the baby’s cry would be the sound that got through to Shelly. “We tickled her, we even pinched her. It took 10 minutes, and then she let out a wail,” Jeremy told People.
Just as Manus had hoped, the sound of her crying baby was just what Shelly needed to hear. “They say they saw a spike in my vitals when she did cry,” Shelly told Fox 46. “They think that me hearing her subconsciously gave my body and my subconscious a reason to fight — that I still needed to be there for my baby.”
Shelly’s fight wasn’t over, but the sound of her baby’s voice started her recovery. “It was the crying that got Shelly going again, got her fighting again,” Jeremy told People. “I got my wife back.”
A week later, Shelly came out of her coma completely and was, ultimately, fine. Today and she and Rylan are healthy and happy. Last week, the Cawley family celebrated Rylan’s first birthday, and Shelly posted a “then and now” photo to Facebook, celebrating how far she and her daughter have come. “As the night comes to a close, I reflect on my day and how different it was than at the same time a year ago. What a difference a year makes! Last year I was fighting for my life, and this year I have a 1 year old who is thriving, and I am back in nursing school doing what I love,” she wrote. “Can’t wait to discover what God has planned for my life, and to just enjoy the ride on the way there!”