A mother has shared the astonishing story of how she gave birth while asleep — only waking to discover her newborn son between her legs.
Carolina Moreno, 27, of Alberta, Canada, said the April delivery initially seemed similar to the births of her two older children.
Moreno had hoped for an unmedicated labor, but changed her mind after her contractions began coming back-to-back and the pain became overwhelming.
Medical staff administered a Patient-Controlled Epidural Analgesia, or PCEA, which lets patients press a button to receive additional pain medication within preset safety limits.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Moreno said previous epidurals had brought her “fast relief,” but this time, more than an hour after receiving the anesthesia, she said she “was still feeling everything.”
When she told nurses the epidural “wasn’t working,” Moreno said they advised her to press the button several times. She estimated she pushed it about three times in total, though she noted she could not be completely certain because she had also been given “laughing gas.”
“I was also told that the machine limits how much you can dose yourself so even if I push it 20 times in five minutes it is not going to dose me 20 times,” she explained.
Eventually, Moreno said she began to feel “some pain relief.” By then, it was after 4 a.m. and she was “absolutely exhausted,” prompting her to drift off to sleep.
Carolina Moreno, 27, from Alberta, Canada, gave birth while sleeping, and woke up to find her baby between her legs
She was in labor at the hospital and dozed off when she was only four centimeters dilated, figuring if it came time to push, she’d wake up
‘At that point, I had been having contractions back to back with no breaks for the whole night so I really needed rest,’ she shared.
When she went to bed she was only four centimeters dilated so it never occurred to her that the baby was coming soon and she figured if it came time to push, she’d wake up.
She added: ‘I never thought I could sleep through a birth because again this was my third epidural and I’ve always felt the pressure when I’m fully dilated and ready to push.’
Around 7am, a nurse came into the room and woke her up because the ‘machine that monitors the baby’s heartbeat’ had alerted them that there was no heartbeat.
‘This had happened before so we weren’t worried at first. [If I adjusted] myself it would move the monitor or the baby would move and she’d just come in and fix it,’ Moreno explained.
‘But a few minutes passed and I was finally like, “Okay this is weird, is something wrong?”
‘I thought something was really wrong – anyone who’s ever been pregnant could tell you that there’s a feeling of extreme panic anytime there’s a delay in finding baby’s heartbeat, I was already imagining myself being rushed off into surgery.’
While trying to find the heartbeat, the nurse also mentioned that her stomach ‘felt really weird.’
Moreno, seen during the pregnancy, woke up when nurses couldn’t hear her baby’s heartbeat. They then discovered him between her legs
Moreno, seen with one of her other children and husband, said the birth was immensely ‘traumatic’
She asked Moreno to turn from her side to her back, and as she was moving, Moreno said she ‘felt something on the bed’ between her legs.
‘Then my nurse lifted up the blankets and found my baby,’ she shared.
‘I honestly never thought for even a second we were going to find my baby there, I’m not sure what I thought it would be but I didn’t think it would be my baby.’
Moreno said she was immediately flooded with immense fear because she didn’t know if the baby was healthy.
‘It was incredibly scary for me, he was found on his stomach and he wasn’t crying,’ she went on.
‘He obviously hadn’t cried at all [or I would have heard] and that’s not a good thing. I thought he was dead when we first saw him.
‘The nurse was amazing, she acted so fast, she didn’t even have a second of hesitation between finding baby and picking him up. She got him crying right away.’
Moreno said doctors checked both her and the baby over, and declared both were perfectly healthy.
‘Our baby boy is thankfully completely healthy, he was actually just sleeping when they found him,’ she explained.
‘He’s an incredibly chill baby. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t fuss, he goes to sleep when you lay him down. He’s just a very, very chill baby.’
She said not getting to experience his birth and thinking something was wrong with him when they first discovered him is something that still haunts her today
While Moreno is extremely grateful that her son is okay, she described the birth as ‘really traumatic.’
And not getting to experience his birth and thinking something was wrong with him when they first discovered him is something that still haunts her today.
‘I genuinely thought my baby wasn’t alive and then even when they got him crying I felt like I couldn’t believe that, even after I was holding him I was sure something was going to happen,’ she said.
‘I know a lot of people think that this is awesome because I felt no pain but I have a lot of mom guilt from missing my son’s birth, that’s not a moment you want to miss.
‘Also we waited nine months to find out the gender since we already had one of each at home and the excitement was completely lost because we just wanted him to be okay.
‘I had imagined this euphoric moment where he’d be put on my chest and my husband would say what [gender] he is and instead it was just five seconds of, “Oh he’s a boy, please make sure he’s alive.”‘
