Woman and Her Twins Survive Mother's Heart Attack, Labor

LONDON, April 17, 2009— -- Giving birth to twins is a challenge in and of itself without having to survive a heart attack before an emergency Caesarean and then hours of open-heart surgery immediately afterward.

But Nina Whear did just that, becoming the first woman in Britain, and the second in the world, to give birth to twins at the same time she had surgery to repair a torn aorta.

Aortic dissection is a potentially life-threatening condition in which there is bleeding into and along the wall of the aorta, the major artery leaving the heart.

Whear beat all odds by surviving and recovering from about eight hours of surgery that included giving birth to healthy twins Alfie and Evie.

"This was a very extraordinary case," surgeon Sam Nashaf told ABC News. "It almost never happens that a pregnant woman needs this kind of surgery. All odds were against her, but she survived."

Whear, 38, said, "I'm so grateful that I survived this, that I have been praying and saying thanks every day. It's so great to be with my children. I didn't think that was possible when I went into surgery."

The doctors who diagnosed Whear gave her a 7 percent chance of surviving the rare procedure. She is now recovering in her home in Lamas, Norfolk.

"Even doctors don't know everything," Nashaf said of the poor odds doctors gave her. "Infection of the aorta is the most serious surgical emergency there is. This condition sheers off the wall of the aorta like wallpaper, which puts you in a very high risk of fatal bleeding, among other complications."

Whear, who experienced a difficult pregnancy, had been in and out of the hospital many times. But then she woke up one night about three months with breathing problems. Unable to move or talk, Whear woke up her mother, Anne George, who was staying with her.

Docs Told Nina Whear's Husband She Was Dying

With Whear being 38 weeks pregnant, George thought her daughter had gone into labor. But Whear's breathing problems worsened, and by the time the ambulance had arrived, she had turned blue from the lack of oxygen.

The paramedics immediately recognized that Whear was having an extraordinary complication and rushed her to the hospital. Now looking back at that night, Whear said, "I had never been more scared."

But her soldier husband Andy, 39, wasn't immediately alarmed when they called him to come to the hospital that night, he said.

"I didn't think it was too serious, until the doctors called me and explained it was her heart and that she needed serious surgery," he said.

His wife then had to be transferred to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, which has a specialist heart unit for open-heart surgery.

Nina Whear didn't think she would survive the surgery, she said. "When I went in, I thought, 'This is it.' But I was very calm because I wanted to make everything easier for Andy," she said. "I didn't want to go out panicking."

The surgeons believed her chances of survival were so small that a chaplain from the hospital was called in to pray with Nina while her husband was called in to say goodbye. "Nina was very brave," her husband said. "I was panicking and anxious, but she was calm and very strong at that moment."

Nashaf said he and other doctors had a difficult decision to make. "Usually, the rules of pregnancy are, what is good for the mother is good for the babies. But now it was the opposite."

The best choice for the twins was immediate delivery, which could raise Whear's blood pressure enough to kill her.

But the medical team managed to deliver the babies in less than an hour. Then they had to wait an hour for Whear to stabilize and started the repair of the aortic dissection, which would last six hours.

Amazing Job

"The medical staff really pulled together and did an amazing job," Whear said. "I'm thankful to the surgeons but also the ambulance medics who immediately recognized the seriousness of my situation."