A new mother was cut open without anesthesia during an emergency c-section in California, she alleges in a lawsuit against the hospital.
When Delfina Mota went into labor with her daughter, Cali Iheanachor, her blood pressure dipped dangerously low, NBC 7 reports.
The doctor on call at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, California was unable to detect the baby’s heart rate and decided Mota needed to have an emergency c-section.
But Mota claims that the medical team did not give her anesthesia.
She remembers in excruciating detail feeling a knife cut into her belly and screaming for doctors to stop before she lost consciousness.
Paul Iheanchor (left) and his fiance Delfina Mota (right) are suing Tri-City hospital after employees there failed to give Mota anesthesia in an emergency c-section delivery of their daughter, Cali Iheanchor (center)
Emergency c-sections are performed when doctors believe that the mother or baby is in distress.
The operation is safe, but is still a major abdominal surgery and requires anesthesia to ensure that the mother does not go into shock from pain and distress.
Mota was horrified as her surgery began to unfold right before her eyes.
It was ‘something like out of a horror movie,’ she told NBC.
To perform a c-section, a doctor has to cut a long incision across a woman’s abdomen, then do the same again through the deeper tissue of her uterus.
‘Once I felt it, I was just screaming like, “stop. I can feel it.” And after that I’m pretty sure I passed out from the pain,’ Mota told NBC.
Tri-City Hospitals (pictured) allegedly paged an anesthesiologist repeatedly and waited nine minutes before starting the emergency c-section without him
An employee of Tri-City Hospital (left) hands newborn Cali Iheanachor (center) to Mota (right) just after the harrowing c-section delivery
Mota has filed a lawsuit against Tri-City Hospital in Oceanside, California, claiming that the procedure they performed on her amounted to malpractice and assault
Her fiance, Paul Iheanachor, was outside the room but could hear Mota screaming and then go quiet.
‘If somebody put a knife in your stomach and cut you open, and had their hands on your insides, and ripped your baby out, you know. I just tried to put myself in her shoes,’ he said.
The lawsuit claims that Iheanachor was trying to get into the room to be with Mota but was restrained by hospital employees.
‘I just tried to wrap my mind around how it would feel to basically be gutted like a fish.’
According to the lawsuit that Mota filed against Tri-City, Mota’s delivery team paged the anesthesiologist on call, Dr David Seif, several times to no avail.
It was like something out of a horror movie
Delfina Mota, describing having a c-section without anesthesia
They waited nine minutes without answer from him before strapping Mota to the operating table proceeding with the c-section.
The family’s attorney, Norman Finkelstein told NBC that when he’s told people about what allegedly unfolded at Tri-City they ask if it happened ‘in some third-world country?’
‘If you want the best care, in case, God forbid, an emergency situation arises, you want to be in a big hospital, and this hospital failed,’ he said.
Daily Mail Online contacted Tri-City but a spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Mota and her daughter are physically in good health now, but that hasn’t erased the trauma she went through.
‘It’s probably going to stay with me for the rest of my life,’ Mota said.