After doctors induced Rachel Storch’s labor in April, it progressed rapidly. Suddenly, she felt sick and struggled to breath. At the time, Michael Storch, had stepped out of the room because he felt queasy.
As he rested in the hallway, he heard a code blue being called to his wife’s room. “That was terrifying,” Michael Storch, 37, of Glencoe, Illinois, tells TODAY.com.
“I’m not exaggerating about 60 medical professionals came onto our floor ...
rushing towards our room.” Rachel Storch, 36, experienced an amniotic fluid embolism, “a rare but unpredictable and usually catastrophic obstetric emergency,” says Dr. David Ouyang.
Suddenly, Michael Storch felt unsure his wife would survive. “(A staff member) said, ‘You need to call whoever you think needs to be in here in case of the worst,’” he recalls. “I still didn’t understand how serious things were.
” When Rachel Storch gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, Olivia, on January 22, 2020, everything went “smoothly.” “They did have trouble getting the placenta out,” Rachel Storch says. “All was fine.
I ended up going home.” Only two days later, though, she experienced “terrible cramps,” that felt like contractions that caused her to writhe in pain on the apartment floor. Later she passed huge blood clots.
She visited her doctor, who sent her home by saying that sometimes things like that happened after delivery. As her bleeding increased, she worried. “I thought something was .