She was a young mother.
We had never met her before. She arrived gasping for air. Within moments, the room was full. Everyone came together with one purpose, to save her. Then her heart stopped.
CPR began immediately. The obstetric team delivered the baby while compressions continued. Thirty minutes passed. No pulse. We kept going. Every voice in the room was thinking out loud. What are the reversible causes? Keep going. Don’t stop.
Another thirty minutes passed. She’s young. She has children waiting at home. A newborn has just entered the world. Keep going. Everyone gave everything they had. Still, there was no pulse.
Eventually, we had to stop. The room became quiet. Some of us fought back tears. Others couldn’t. We had to call her husband so he could say goodbye. It was one of the hardest moments any of us had experienced.
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I saw the obstetric resident crying. Nurses quietly wiping away their tears. The anesthesia team avoiding eye contact because there were no words that could make sense of what had just happened. Then we went back to work. No one wanted to talk. There was only silence.
The following day, we gathered for a debrief. More than anything, we gathered simply to talk. Everyone was carrying the same weight. One junior staff member asked me, “When will this feeling go away? The heaviness in my chest?”
I didn’t have an easy answer. No matter how many maternal deaths we witness, it hurts every single time. Because the truth is, at the end of the day, we are health care professionals, but we are also human beings with beating hearts.
It is OK to grieve for someone you had never met. It is OK to feel sadness after losing a patient. It is OK to carry that loss.
Maternal deaths affect more than families. They also leave lasting emotional scars on the health care workers who stood at the bedside, who fought for every heartbeat, who exhausted every possibility, and who still had to walk out of that room and continue caring for others.
Acknowledging these emotions is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of our humanity. The pain may soften with time, but some patients stay with us forever. And perhaps that is because, despite all our training, all our protocols, and all our experience, we never stop caring.
It was never easy. And it never will be.
Fatemah Qasem is an obstetric anesthesiologist in Kuwait.
