Mother's Intuition: Michigan Mom Predicted Baby's Near-Fatal Illness Before Doctors Had a Clue

Oct. 26, 2012 — -- We've all heard of mother's intuition: when a mom just knows something's wrong with her kids. But have you ever wondered if there was something more going on?

Michigan mom of two Lynn Darmon is convinced that has to be the case after she nearly lost her second child shortly after birth.

For Darmon, it started as a feeling -- a sixth sense filling her with dread that something was wrong while her baby was still in the womb.

Learn more about premonitions on "20/20: The Sixth Sense" TONIGHT at 10 p.m. ET.

It was "just a feeling that something was not right; that something wasn't feeling right. Not that something was wrong in the present with the pregnancy, but that something was going to come up, with the baby's health," Darmon told Elizabeth Vargas in an interview airing tonight on "20/20."

"The feeling pretty much was, to prepare myself for it and to be able to recognize when it was going to happen," she said.

What exactly? She wasn't sure, but Darmon passed along her feeling to her doctor, who assured her everything was fine.

"There was always a feeling, 'Well, maybe it's just my imagination,'" she said.

Her daughter Ali was born healthy and happy, and just as Darmon was about to dismiss the bad vibes as parental paranoia, they came back with a vengeance.

"Ten days into her birth, it was early morning. I remember holding her, and having that feeling, that something was really wrong with her."

Her pediatrician encouraged her to go to the emergency room with Ali, mostly to try to alleviate Lynn's fears. Twice she brought Ali in and was returned home with a clean bill of health, but the feeling persisted and grew stronger.

Sensing the clock was ticking on her daughter's life, Lynn took Ali again, this time to Beaumont Children's Hospital. When they once again tried to send Lynn home, she dug her heels in.

"They said, 'She is fine. Here are your discharge papers,' and I refused to sign them," Darmon said.

She said that at that point the medical staff thought they had a mother who needed help, not a child.

"And at that moment, they are thinking they have a mom with post-partum psychosis," she said.

But before hospital staff could get her to see a psychiatrist, Pediatric Infectious Disease specialist Dr. Bishara Freij stepped in.

"She was clearly concerned that there was something serious going on that nobody had yet to identify or explain," Dr. Freij told "20/20."

"He said, 'You are so sure that there is something wrong with your daughter, you tell me what it is.' And I remember at that moment looking at my daughter, making eye contact with her and knowing immediately it was in the, in the abdomen. It just came to me," Darmon said.

Dr. Freij ordered a CT scan, and, as it turned out, Darmon had nailed it: Ali had a rare, undetected infection outside her small intestine which could have been fatal if not caught just in time.

"She ended up being in the operating room really within two or three hours of the encounter," Feij said.

Looking back, Darmon is convinced that her feeling wasn't just mother's intuition, but a paranormal phenomenon called a premonition.

Dr. Feij isn't sure what happened that day, but to him, a mother's intuition or premonition is always something to take seriously.

"I'm an older pediatrician and my mother still insists some of her intuition is better than our education," he said. "Sometimes, she's right."