Emma Heuston-Levack had a nasty case of morning sickness, so to be on the safe side, she went to her local hospital.
There, it was confirmed that she did indeed have extreme morning sickness, also known as hyperemesis gravidarum.
Emma from Australia was just 13 weeks pregnant, and was relieved to hear it was nothing serious. She was given a shot of an anti-nausea drug and placed on a saline drip.
That's when things started to go south as Emma went into sudden cardiac arrest.
"I don't remember what happened next, but my husband does," she wrote in an article for essentialbaby.com.au.
"He was present when they called a code red emergency, and ripped my clothes from my body to resuscitate and defibrillate me."
"By some miracle, my heart eventually started again. I was taken to intensive care unit in a comatose state."
After a painfully slow recovery at first, Emma woke, disoriented.
"My head felt like it was filled with cotton wool and I couldn't focus. For a short while my husband feared I was brain damaged with no short-term memory. We were told this was a common reaction to a sudden cardiac arrest."
Despite feeling extremely out-of-it, Emma immediately turned her attention to her unborn baby, who had just been through this horrific experience with her.
"I repeated two phrases over and over again to my husband - 'where am I?' and 'is the baby ok?'," she wrote.
"What of my 13-week-old baby? The baby that had been in my womb when my heart stopped and I was shocked back to life with powerful volts of electricity?"
Luckily, and somewhat incredibly, her little baby was unharmed.
"Miraculously an ultrasound confirmed our baby was in perfect health," she wrote.
"A few days after the cardiac arrest, I was moved into the cardiac unit. By this time, I was able to walk around and my memory was improving."
"The move to the cardiac ward signalled the start of my recovery. But it also signalled the start of numerous tests and monitoring that would continue until well into and after my pregnancy."
After what seemed like an age, Emma received a diagnosis. Se had Takotsubo syndrome, doctors said.
Also known as stress-induced cardiomyopathy, it can be caused by magnesium deficiency and dehydration (caused by morning sickness), combined with the anti-nausea drug, but Emma is unsure what the exact cause was in her case.
"Over four years later, I still don't know why my heart stopped suddenly. That uncertainty lurks in my subconscious like a guerrilla warfare fighter and still has the ability to unsettle me when I think about it too deeply."
An openly agnostic woman, Emma admitted that she spent the remaining 27 weeks of her pregnancy praying that her child would be okay.
"[I spent it] silently praying that every day I would wake up and my heart would keep beating."
"I hoped beyond hope that my baby would be born healthy and bear no ill effects from the cardiac arrest."
Understandably, Emma experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after all she'd been through.
"I was fearful of random and unusual everyday events like being a passenger in a car," she said. "I also had ongoing morning sickness well into the third trimester. But most of all, I was scared I would still lose my baby after all I had been through."
Her constant worry found a way out as she became increasingly sensitive and snappy.
"A comment from a well-meaning family member as to what a miracle it was the baby survived my near-death experience left me shaken and angry. I convinced myself that they didn't care about me or my health, only the health of my baby."
"After what seemed like an eternity, my little boy was born in perfect health at 39 weeks. The moment he was placed in my arms was overwhelming."
"I had fought so hard for him, yet I was worried we might not bond after the fight we had faced together. I needn't have been concerned. The love was immediate and all-encompassing. It still is."
Emma's son will be four this year, and he displays no signs of his traumatic time in the womb.
"He's full of brash attitude and little boy joy," she wrote.
Despite the happy ending, Emma is too scared to try for another child.
"I would be lying if I said there was not an occasional flutter of deep regret in my stomach when I see a friend, fellow mothers group member or family member welcome a second baby into their families," she said.
"But that can't be compared to ridiculously grateful I am for each day my heart continues to beat, allowing me to spend more days, months and years with my husband and our son."
