A Colorado mother recounts a harrowing experience of ‘dying’ shortly after giving birth, describing how her spirit seemingly drifted up to heaven only to be sent back to life.

In 2021, Hannah Mercado delivered her second son, Watson, when she was suddenly overwhelmed with severe pain and heavy bleeding.

“The nurse assured me it was normal,” Mercado recalled, “but then I felt an excruciating pain like never before. Blood was everywhere, and I passed a blood clot as large as a pineapple.”

Realizing something was terribly wrong, Mercado found herself surrounded by a flurry of medical staff—nurses, doctors, and anesthesiologists—in what quickly turned into a chaotic scene.

Doctors explained that a piece of her placenta, which nourishes the baby during pregnancy, had not been expelled, necessitating urgent surgery to remove it.

During the procedure, the stay-at-home mom began to hemorrhage uncontrollably, leading to her losing consciousness as her heart stopped and blood pressure dropped. Medical professionals estimate she was clinically ‘dead’ for about a minute.

During this time, Mercado claims she began to float above her body toward the afterlife, completely aware she was dead. She was then met with ‘the brightest white light’ that filled her with an overwhelming sense of peace before she fell back into her body.

Mercado recovered fully from the ordeal, though she says it helped affirmed her faith and squash any fears of death.

Hannah Mercado had just given birth to her second son in 2021 when she suffered a near-death experience. She is pictured above shortly after the delivery

She said: ‘I started really not feeling good then started floating above myself and thought, “Oh, I think I might be dying.”

‘I couldn’t see myself because I was surrounded by so many people. I could look down and see all these people working on me.

‘It wasn’t like my body was floating, it was like my mind was floating away. I do believe it was my soul leaving my body.’

Mercado is one of the one in 10 Americans who have had a near-death experience (NDE), a transformative event that occurs during a severe medical crisis. 

Some feel themselves being propelled down into a black hole, blinded by a bright light or wandering a Matrix-like grid. Many are met by an angel and taken to heaven for a visit. But when they return, the medical emergencies that nearly kill them often leave these patients with emotional whiplash.

And not all NDEs are pleasant. A recent study out of the University of Virginia found  that ‘a small percentage of NDEs experienced [are] distressing.’ The team also suggested between 10 and 22 percent of these experiences are negative. 

While Mercado was at first enamored by the experience, she was also hit with a sense of dread, thinking: ‘I’m never going to see my kids again.’

Mercado is pictured with her husband and both sons. She said she panicked during her near-death experience at the thought of never seeing her children again

Mercado, pictured above with her husband and both children, said the experience has affirmed her faith in God and the afterlife

‘That was heartbreaking,’ she said. ‘That was my last thought before I saw the brightest light I’d ever seen in my life.

‘You could stare into the sun for minutes and it would never be this bright. It was all-encompassing, I was like inside the bright, white light.

‘That’s when I knew I was dead. I felt so at peace, it was like my soul was at peace.’

The overall experience was short-lived when Mercado was suddenly brought back to her body. She said: ‘Then it felt like I was drop-kicked into being alive. It was very abrupt and sudden. 

‘I was in a panic. I didn’t know what had happened.’

Mercado underwent two blood transfusions after coming back to consciousness, as she had lost half of her body’s blood supply, over half a gallon. 

She has had no lasting complications from the ordeal and has had her faith in God and the afterlife further cemented. 

She said: ‘I’ve always been a Christian. This gave me even more of a realization that I do believe in God and I was going up to heaven. It made me realize the afterlife is real.

‘It was definitely a spiritual experience. If anything it’s made me closer to God. I’m definitely not afraid of dying anymore.’