My partner gave birth while she was in a coma

The message was brief, but it meant everything to Scott Weeks. Just months before, he wouldn’t have dared to dream that his partner Emma could ever communicate with him, in any form, let alone by tapping on a computer keyboard from her bed.

It read: ‘I will see real life Scott.’

And it was 33-year-old Emma’s way of telling him that, despite the near-fatal brain tumour that had left her trapped in her own body, she was determined to recover — for his sake and that of their baby daughter Ophelia.

‘It was the first thing she’d written and I felt I was going to burst into tears,’ he recalls.

‘It was so powerful, because I understood she meant she was coming back to me. The determination behind it was overwhelming.’

Emma collapsed last October at the couple’s Chelmsford home when the tumour, of which she had been unaware, burst at the back of her skull. 

She was 34 weeks pregnant and doctors had to place her in a medically induced coma to deliver Ophelia by emergency caesarean.

It was touch and go whether Emma would survive. Doctors initially told Scott that, even if she did, she would be unrecognisable from the woman he had fallen in love with.

Yet they did not bank on Emma’s determination — or Scott’s devotion. Today, while still paralysed down her left side, she can move her right leg and arm, nod her head and, astonishingly, has suffered no long-term brain damage. 

The trauma her brain has been through, however, means she has to learn everything from scratch, from walking to speech.

With intensive physiotherapy, doctors now believe she could make an almost full recovery. ‘The Emma I fell in love with is still there and she’s worth fighting for,’ 47-year-old Scott told me this week. 

‘From the start, I kept this undying optimism. I always had this faith that Emma would come back to me.’

Faith, but also love and hope, are qualities that have sustained Scott, a trading technologies specialist, through these terrifying months. 

Not to mention Ophelia, now a bouncing baby girl with a huge smile and her mother’s beautiful blue eyes. ‘She’s a lovely little thing,’ Scott says proudly. ‘She’s very vocal.’

During the week, both Emma and Scott’s parents help with childcare, but Scott is very much a hands-on dad. 

‘I remind myself it’s a privilege to be able to bond with my daughter in this way,’ he says. ‘I just feel so guilty that Emma is missing out on so much.’

It’s a terrible irony that it was Emma’s longed-for pregnancy that hastened the growth of the chordoma, a non-cancerous 60mm-long tumour wrapped around her spinal column, that surgeons believe had been there since birth. 

‘Doctors said if she hadn’t fallen pregnant she would have had until her late 50s before she was affected. 

It had basically done 20 years of growth in seven months because of her pregnancy hormones.’

The couple met in 2020 through a dating app and hit it off instantly. ‘Emma’s a very lovely person — thoughtful, caring, considerate,’ says Scott. 

They talked about having children and in April last year Emma revealed she was expecting. ‘We were both over the moon,’ says Scott.

At first it seemed like a model pregnancy; Emma had no morning sickness, and scans showed the baby was thriving. ‘Emma really looked after herself. She wanted to do everything right for the baby,’ says Scott.

But halfway through her pregnancy Emma noticed her cheeks tingled. ‘She became convinced it was something to do with the multivitamin she was taking,’ he recalls. ‘Now we know it’s likely to have been linked to the tumour.’

Then, on October 30, and seven and a half months pregnant, Emma woke up with a bad headache. ‘We had some errands to do and while I suggested she stayed at home, Emma was the sort of person who liked always doing things together, so there was no way she wasn’t coming.’ 

After stopping at a coffee shop, he noticed Emma’s eyes were occasionally rolling in her head. ‘She also said her headache was getting worse,’ he says. The couple returned home and Emma went to bed. 

Not long afterwards, Scott heard a thump on the floor and, running upstairs, found she had fallen onto the floor and been violently sick.

‘Her voice was slurred and her right eye was half closed. I knew something was seriously wrong,’ he recalls. 

‘I called an ambulance, but they told me it was a four-hour wait. I told them I’d take her to hospital myself.’

Later, doctors would tell Scott his decision had saved not only Emma’s life but Ophelia’s too. ‘If we had waited, both of them would be dead.’

A neighbour helped him get Emma downstairs, as by now she could not move the left side of her body. They arrived at Chelmsford’s Broomfield Hospital where a ‘swarm’ of medics descended as terrified Scott looked on.

‘They whisked her away for a scan and 15 minutes later a doctor came out and said they had placed Emma in an induced coma and were going to deliver the baby,’ he recalls.

Ophelia was delivered by C-section, weighing just under 5lb, and was taken away to a neo-natal unit. ‘Doctors told me while she needed oxygen, she was doing well, and I told myself she was in safe hands. I was just frantically worried about Emma.’

Scott had to wait another agonising two hours for news. When it came, it was devastating: Emma had had a heavy bleed on the brain. 

She needed to be moved to a hospital with a specialist neurology department so she was air-lifted to Queen’s Hospital in Romford.

There, a more detailed scan revealed the tumour at the base of Emma’s skull, which had caused the bleed. As a result, her right brain stem and right eye were affected, leaving her paralysed. She had lost the sight in that eye, which she is unlikely to recover.

Surgeons needed to operate. ‘They told me that even if Emma survived, she would likely not be the woman I remembered,’ says Scott. 

‘Just the night before we had been at the dinner table, chatting about the future like any excited parents-to-be. Now we were in a life or death situation.’

Surgeons successfully removed two-thirds of the tumour. The lead surgeon told Scott that, to his surprise, he could find no evidence of brain damage.

‘He said that given her age, she could make a strong comeback with the right physiotherapy.’

They removed the sedation Emma was under the day after the op but she remained unconscious. The next question was whether Emma, who’d been hooked up to a ventilator, would be able to breathe on her own.

Amidst this emotional turmoil, Scott was also coming to terms with the fact he was a father. 

His newborn daughter was still in the NICU unit at Broomfield, where Scott got to hold her for the first time two days after she was born. 

‘I was blown away by her, but at the same time devastated for Emma that she was missing out.’

Scott was soon to face an agonising choice. Still showing no signs of being able to breathe on her own, doctors broke the devastating news that it might be time to experiment with turning off her ventilator. 

If she was going to make it, she had to breathe on her own. It was a nerve-racking decision, but Scott felt in his gut that Emma would fight. 

‘We all had to prepare for the worst but the moment they turned off the ventilator, she took a breath as if she had never stopped. It was the most wonderful thing.’

As she no longer required a ventilator, Emma was moved back to Broomfield, where another question mark hung over her future. 

Scott explains: ‘While she could breathe on her own, she had still not recovered consciousness. Doctors had said they believed there was only a three per cent chance of her doing so and we were facing the possibility that she might never do so and have to spend her life in a care home.

Scott visited Emma every day, sitting at her bedside and sharing news. ‘I felt compelled to be there,’ he says. ‘I told her she was a mum and although I didn’t know how much she could take in, I felt like somewhere in there she knew — and that she would fight to come back.’

His eyes moisten as he recalls the first time he placed Ophelia — by now discharged from hospital — in her mother’s arms, shortly before Christmas. 

‘It was tough as Emma was still unconscious, but I wanted her to feel Ophelia’s touch. I just held onto this faith that Emma was still in there and that she would fight her way back to us.’

He was right; arriving on Emma’s ward at the end of January, Scott was told that she had started to roll her eyes in answer to questions. It meant Emma was now having sporadic consciousness — the miracle the family had prayed for.

Emma was transferred to a rehabilitation unit at Northwick Park, where she moved from being aware for several hours a day to fully conscious.

He smiles at the memory of the first time he became aware that Emma was conscious he was with her. ‘I knelt by her in her chair and put my head on her lap and told her how much I had missed her.’

With the help of physio, she has been making gradual improvements and can move her head from side to side and up and down and, with her right hand, communicates via a small computer by her hospital bed. 

She is able to cuddle her daughter with her right arm and kiss the top of her head if Scott lifts her to her mouth. It was at the end of April that she tapped out that message to tell Scott she would return to him.

Sadly however, her progress has stalled. Now deemed low priority by the NHS, Emma has been moved to another unit where she only receives one hour of physiotherapy a week. It is simply not enough.

‘The staff are fantastic, but they don’t have the means to give Emma the intensive therapy she needs to progress,’ Scott says.

It’s the reason he has set up a Go Fund Me page for intensive treatment to help Emma learn to walk and talk again. At several thousand pounds a week, it is simply beyond his means.

‘A reduction in rehabilitation has already slowed Emma’s recovery,’ he says. ‘Intensive physio, even for just a few months, could make the difference between her holding Ophelia and pushing her along in a buggy and being in a wheelchair for the next few years.’

He knows how much Emma wants this too. ‘There have been tears and Emma has told me via her computer she is desperate to do more.’

In the meantime Scott and Emma’s family are doing everything they can to help Emma be the best mum she can.

‘I try to involve her in Ophelia’s life as much as possible, right down to what clothes I should buy. I show her pictures on my iPad and she nods or shakes her head. She has very strong opinions,’ he laughs.

It is not the start to family life that either of them envisaged, and Scott admits it has taken its toll. 

‘Some days I feel almost emotionally disconnected,’ says Scott. ‘Then other days I feel totally overwhelmed. But when that happens I remember what Emma has been through.

‘She has fought so hard and it is down to me to fight for her too.’