A nurse at Hacienda Healthcare repeatedly told paramedics they had no idea their patient was pregnant.
“Baby’s turning blue!”
That was the desperate cry of a nurse at Hacienda Healthcare in Phoenix, Arizona, after staff discovered a patient in a vegetative state was giving birth.
On Friday, the Phoenix Police Department released the suspenseful 911 call after the 29-year-old woman, who had been living in a vegetative state for more than 14 years, went into labor.
“One of the patients just had a baby and we had no idea she was pregnant,” the unidentified nurse exclaimed during her call with 911 operators.
Officers were already on the way to the facility when a paramedic on the line instructed nurses to start CPR compression and take vitals on the patient.
“We had no idea this patient was pregnant,” the nurse reiterated. “We were not prepared for it.”
She said during the call that they were successfully able to deliver the baby and the mom’s vitals seemed normal, but it was several minutes before the baby began breathing.
“This is a complete surprise,” she repeated. “We were not expecting this.”
Officers arrived after the baby started crying and “they found a woman in her 20s, who was incapacitated, who had delivered a baby. The baby was in distress. The woman and the baby were transported to a local hospital,” police said in a statement to KPHO.
The new mom has been a patient at Hacienda Healthcare since she was 3 years old, according to KPHO. The child is reportedly healthy.
A police investigation is now underway to determine how exactly the pregnancy came to be.
In a statement, Hacienda said Board Executive Vice President Gary Orman vowed that Hacienda "will accept nothing less than a full accounting of this absolutely horrifying situation, an unprecedented case that has devastated everyone involved, from the victim and her family to Hacienda staff at every level of our organization."
Hacienda "will continue to cooperate with Phoenix Police and the investigating agencies at all levels in every way possible,” Orman said.
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