In the middle of labor with her first child, Perrie Wilkof’s pulse stopped.
What had been a healthy pregnancy for the owner of the beloved Dough Mama café in Columbus’ Clintonville neighborhood became a life-or-death situation for herself and her unborn daughter.
More in Opinion: ‘Black women have been screaming into the void for years.’ Mothers are dying unnecessarily.
Surgeons, pediatricians, anesthesiologists and more at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center had to act fast to stabilize the rapidly deteriorating mother and a baby whose own pulse was in danger of dropping from lack of oxygen. Every minute counted.
“You know, you think ‘What if I’m one of those people that is unlucky?’ But everybody says to you, ‘no way, that’s so rare that’s not going to be you’,” Wilkof said, holding her happy, and very vocal, daughter in a recent interview with The Dispatch.
Yes, Wilkof and her baby girl survived that day, something she and her partner Nick Guyton, a part-owner at Gemüt Biergarten, credit to two OSU doctors in particular: Dr. Caroline Bank, the first doctor to evaluate Wilkof and focus on stabilizing her, and Dr. Sema Hajmurad, the resident who led the emergency Cesarean section.