Ellie Marples gave birth to baby Albie via c-section, but as she breastfed him for the first time in the recovery room she started to feel ‘dizzy and sick’ – then things took a terrifying turn
A mum says the happiest day of her life turned into a living nightmare – as she almost died of sepsis while breastfeeding her baby for the first time.
Ellie Marples says she started to feel unwell when she was taken into the recovery room after giving birth to Albie Marples, 9lbs 4oz, who was born via c-section. After breastfeeding her baby boy for the first time, Ellie says she started to feel ‘dizzy and sick’.
The 32-year-old says she started ‘throwing up blood’ and ‘everything turned black’ and she was rushed back into theatre where doctors placed her into an induced coma for the next three weeks. Scans revealed Ellie was suffering from multi-organ failure and sepsis, after experiencing an amniotic fluid embolism.
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This occurs when amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream and is the fifth leading cause of direct maternal death. Ellie was placed on life support and had to have 80% of her colon removed and a stoma bag fitted, as a result of the sepsis.
The following week, October 17 2024, Ellie was rushed in for a life-saving hysterectomy after scans revealed that her womb and cervix were also fully septic ‘from the inside out’. The hospital support worker says that despite the life-changing surgery meaning that she won’t be able to have anymore children she woke up feeling ‘lucky to be alive’.
Ellie, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, said: “It should have been one of the happiest days of my life but it turned into a nightmare. I was in labour for about 22 hours. Eventually when I had [the epidural] I was 10cm [dilated] and I was pushing but he wasn’t coming.
“They decided to take me for a c-section and afterwards everything was fine. They sent me to recovery and I started feeling really poorly – but you don’t know whether it’s because you’ve given birth or because you’ve just had a major operation. I couldn’t quench my thirst and everything went black. I started feeling really sick and I started throwing up blood. I started panicking and then after that I don’t remember anything. They put me in an induced coma for 21 days.”
Ellie was transferred from Jessop Hospital to The Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, where she was placed on dialysis due to the multi-organ failure she was experiencing. There, scans revealed that Ellie’s colon was septic, and she had to have 80% of her colon removed and a stoma bag fitted. Doctors attempted to bring Ellie round from the coma after the operation, but her temperature continued to spike. Ellie was rushed in for more scans that revealed that her womb and cervix were septic and she had to undergo a full hysterectomy.
Ellie said: “They had to fit me a stoma because my bowel was septic. [Afterwards] they started reducing sedation and started trying to bring me round but my temperature was still spiking really high. They knew there was something else somewhere – some sort of infection but they weren’t sure where. They took me for a scan and found out that it was my womb, which was septic so they had to do a full hysterectomy and put me back under sedation. My womb was septic from the inside out but from the first initial scans they didn’t see it.”
Ellie says doctors believe the amniotic fluid embolism caused the sepsis in her womb. Ellie said: “I woke up [from the coma] really, really confused – I wasn’t sure what had happened or where I was. One of the nurses from ICU sat me down and explained everything that had happened to me. After it had happened having more children was the last thing on my mind, I was just happy to be here. I felt really lucky, especially when you see the numbers of the survival rates [from amniotic fluid embolism].
“I just felt so lucky to still be here and everyone was in the right place at the right time for me that night. Even staff have said to me that everyone was where they needed to be at that time. If any one person had been five minutes somewhere else then it would have been a completely different story for me. I was really lucky that I had the people around me at the time.”
Ellie was transferred back to Jessop Hospital in Sheffield – where she had given birth – for two weeks before she was finally able to return home on November 12th 2024. While she has physically recovered from the illness, Ellie says she is still mentally coming to terms with what happened a year on from the ordeal.
Ellie said: “For the first few months I was in and out of hospital. I’ve not been to hospital for the last few weeks now, it’s more the mental side of things now that I’m picking up on rather than the physical side of things. You don’t really have the time to think about the mental side of things when you’re picking up on the physical, especially when you have two young kids.”
Ellie says the ordeal left her ‘nervous’ that she wouldn’t bond with her newborn son Albie, who she was unable to hold for over a month due to being in hospital. Ellie said: “I was nervous because I didn’t want to not bond with him but fortunately I was lucky and I picked up as if I’d been there from day one. It was a tough time, but we’re all in a good place now.”
