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Chelsea Cheveria, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom in Chicago, delivered her second daughter via scheduled cesarean section on February 10, 2026. Her daughter Zairah was born at 2:32 p.m., weighing 5 pounds, 2 ounces. Chelsea kissed her baby’s cheek, her husband Scott told her she was awesome, and he texted the family group chat to say mom and baby were doing great. Forty-five minutes later, Chelsea’s eyes rolled back into her head and she became unresponsive. Her husband looked at the medical team and said: “Something’s not right.”
What happened next was a race that Chelsea’s doctors describe as a matter of minutes. “All of a sudden, without any warning, she experienced a cardiac arrest,” said Dr. Keith Benzuly, a 64-year-old interventional cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine who was not in the delivery room but was immediately called in to help. Scott was asked to leave the room. A nurse told him to pray. He texted the family with news that stopped everyone cold: Chelsea had a 50-50 chance of survival. Chelsea was later told that her OB-GYN, Dr. Robbye McNair, was physically holding her aorta because doctors could not find a vein to stop the bleeding and gain control of the situation.
The medical team performed four rounds of CPR. They put Chelsea on a ventilator and prepared an ECMO machine, a heart-lung bypass device, in case she needed full life support. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with a pulmonary embolism: two large blood clots in her lungs were blocking the flow of blood to her heart. Dr. Benzuly described it as “uncommon,” occurring in roughly one in a thousand cases or fewer. The speed of the team’s response, he said, was the difference between life and death. “If they hadn’t responded so swiftly to resuscitate her, she might have died.”
The Procedure That Saved Her Life and What She Woke Up To
Dr. Benzuly administered blood thinners to begin breaking up the clots and then performed a pulmonary thrombectomy, a surgical procedure to physically remove the blood clots from Chelsea’s lungs. “I knew the best chance for Chelsea to survive and for her baby to get her mother back was for me to get through that procedure and remove the clots,” he said. The procedure was successful. Chelsea survived the night.
The next morning, Chelsea opened her eyes and found herself in the ICU. She had a breathing tube in her mouth, was on a ventilator, and could hear monitors beeping around her. Her husband Scott was in the chair beside her bed. She had several broken ribs and a broken sternum from the CPR compressions. Scott, relieved beyond words, told her: “Oh my God, you’re here. Don’t ever leave me again.” The first thing Chelsea asked about was her baby. Scott told her that Zairah was healthy and in the hospital nursery.
Despite the pain from her broken ribs and sternum, Chelsea asked repeatedly to hold her newborn. When she finally did, she described the experience as magic. “I told my girlfriends it was the best pain reliever,” she said. “Touching her and having her skin-to-skin was the best medicine that I could have asked for. I knew that was what we both needed in that moment.” Dr. Benzuly was moved when he later saw a photograph of Chelsea sitting up in bed, smiling and holding Zairah. “I was brought to tears,” he said. “All the years of training, the long hours, the late nights, it’s all worth it because that helped make that picture possible.”
Coming Home and the Recovery Nobody Prepared Her For
On February 12, two days after the delivery, Chelsea’s four-year-old daughter Annayiah visited the hospital to meet her new baby sister for the first time. “She’s just like, ‘I love her,'” Chelsea recalled. The family eventually went home together, but the road back has not been straightforward. Chelsea is still recovering from the physical and emotional impact of what happened. “My girlfriends have to remind me that I almost died and that I need to give myself grace,” she said. “I’m having a hard time embracing that part of it.”
Chelsea’s mother, actress Jane McCreedy, 65, known for her work on the television show Chicago Med, reflected on what the experience revealed about childbirth in the United States. “It reminds you that childbirth is dangerous,” Jane said. “We think it’s just so routine in this country, and for most of us, it is. But it can be very, very dangerous.” Her observation cuts through the assumption that a scheduled, planned cesarean section in a modern hospital is without serious risk. Chelsea’s case is a documented reminder that life-threatening complications can occur even in the most controlled circumstances, without warning and without time to prepare.
Pulmonary embolism, the condition Chelsea experienced, occurs when blood clots travel to the lungs and block blood flow. It is a recognized complication of pregnancy and the postpartum period, a time when women are at elevated risk for blood clot formation. Dr. Benzuly described Chelsea’s case as occurring in roughly one in a thousand deliveries or fewer, making it uncommon but not unheard of in obstetric medicine. The speed with which her medical team diagnosed the cause and performed the thrombectomy was directly responsible for the outcome. A delay of even a short time, Benzuly indicated, could have changed everything.
What Chelsea Wants Next and What Her Story Means for Other Families
Despite everything she experienced on February 10, Chelsea says she wants to try for a third child if her doctors determine it can be done safely. “I trust my team,” she said. “No one can guarantee it; I understand that. But they said that if controlled, it’s doable. Now that we know that I have these underlying issues, if there are things that can be done to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery, I would love to try again.” She has three embryos remaining from a previous IVF process and says she would like to try for a boy.
Zairah, the baby at the center of that terrifying day, now weighs 7 pounds, 10 ounces. The family plans to celebrate her three-month birthday on Mother’s Day. Chelsea has returned to what she describes as her natural role. “I love being these girls’ person and best friend and safe space,” she said. The recovery continues, both physically from the broken ribs and sternum, and emotionally from the experience of nearly dying in the same hour she became a mother for the second time. Both are real, and both are ongoing.
Chelsea’s story is a reminder of what can happen behind the routine language of scheduled procedures and planned deliveries. A cesarean section is major abdominal surgery. A pulmonary embolism can develop and escalate within minutes. The difference between Chelsea holding her daughter today and a very different outcome on February 10 came down to a team of doctors who moved fast, a procedure performed successfully under pressure, and forty-five minutes that changed everything. Her mother said it plainly: childbirth is dangerous. For most families, it goes smoothly. For some, it does not. Chelsea’s recovery, and her willingness to tell the story publicly, gives those families something real to hold onto.