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Pregnancy

Mom claims epidural failed during emergency C-section: 'It was like living in a nightmare'

By Madeline Farber Fox News
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A British woman says her newborn son will be her first and last child after the epidural she received prior to his birth allegedly wore off during an emergency cesarean section.

In September, new mom Jodie Marsden, 27, arrived at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, England, to be induced. She received a routine epidural as she waited to deliver her son.

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Jodie Marsden with baby Arthur.

Jodie Marsden with baby Arthur. (SWNS)

But when her then-unborn child’s blood pressure reportedly dropped to a dangerously low level, doctors prepped Mardsen for an emergency C-section, South West News Service (SWNS), a British news agency, reports.

“They did multiple checks to make sure I was numb, with an ice-cold spray on several areas of my stomach, followed by jabbing me with a needle, and all was fine, I was numb,” she recalled.

But that quickly changed following the incision. Moments later, Marsden said, “I felt them actually pulling my stomach apart as they were ripping the muscles and I was in so much pain.”

“I felt them actually pulling my stomach apart as they were ripping the muscles and I was in so much pain," said Jodie Marsden, 27.

“I felt them actually pulling my stomach apart as they were ripping the muscles and I was in so much pain," said Jodie Marsden, 27. (SWNS)

"The anesthetist was asking me if it was pain or pressure, and I was saying pain, but Matt said it was just like a whisper coming out of me,” she added, referring to her husband. "They could see I was uncomfortable, so they gave me more medication to try and get the pain under control but I was still in pain."

Marsden’s son Arthur was born shortly afterward. But the 27-year-old lost a lot of blood during the ordeal, she told SWNS, and was not able to hold her son until the following day when she was stable.

Reasons for epidural failure vary, but most often are a result of "incorrect primary placement, secondary migration of a catheter after correct placement, and suboptimal dosing of local anesthetic drugs,” according to a 2012 review by the British Journal of Anaesthesia. It’s not clear what caused Marsden’s epidural to fail.

Jodie Marsden, 27 with husband Matt, 34, and baby Arthur.

Jodie Marsden, 27 with husband Matt, 34, and baby Arthur. (SWNS)

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"I love Arthur and am enjoying being a mom, but there's no way I'm going through that all ever again,” she told SWNS. "It was agony. I could feel the clamp inside me and the suction going around and I was really struggling to breathe."

"The whole experience was absolutely terrifying and I am totally traumatized from the birth,” she added. "It was like living in a nightmare, and I'm definitely not having any more children."