2026年4月18日 / 美国东部时间上午8:00 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
撰稿： 凯瑞·布林 新闻编辑
凯瑞·布林是CBSNews.com的新闻编辑，毕业于纽约大学亚瑟·L·卡特新闻学院，此前曾在NBC新闻的《今日数字》栏目任职。她负责报道时事、突发新闻以及包括物质使用障碍在内的相关议题。
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凯西·古尔德毕生都渴望成为一名母亲。很长一段时间里，她的梦想似乎都无法实现：她和丈夫经历了三次流产，不孕治疗也毫无效果。2024年1月，古尔德和丈夫决定放弃尝试。一个月后，她发现自己怀孕了。
古尔德曾感到担忧，但她的孕期十分顺利。她很享受怀孕的时光，宝宝一直在腹中动来动去。妊娠晚期她出现过一些水肿，但医生并未在意。当终于开始宫缩时，她完全没有对分娩感到恐惧，满心都是即将见到儿子的兴奋。
“你以为自己已经到了最后阶段，一切安好，你很健康，宝宝也很健康。你要做的就是把孩子生下来。”33岁的古尔德说道。她于2024年11月1日开始临产。
她的产程十分漫长——足足花了36小时才进入第二产程。这时，“一切都不对劲了”，她回忆道。她的生命体征看起来正常，硬膜外麻醉也有效控制了疼痛，但古尔德突然被一股“强烈的不祥预感”攫住。
“我告诉自己别慌，这时刚好有位医生从我身边走过，我看到角落里有一团黑影。很难形容那种感觉，如果你看向房间的角落，几乎就像有黑色阴影笼罩住了那里，”古尔德说，“然后我看向护士们所在的方向，那边也开始出现同样的景象。当医生回到我床边时，我一把抓住她和旁边的护士，说：‘不对劲，我觉得自己快要死了。’”
紧急手术与长达数日的昏迷
古尔德话音刚落，她儿子的心率就骤降。古尔德被迅速送往手术室，接受镇静后紧急剖腹产。几分钟内，她的儿子就顺利降生。随后医生发现古尔德的心脏出现了衰竭。
心脏病专家阿米尔·赛义德医生被紧急召集过来。他检测发现古尔德的射血分数——衡量心脏泵血能力的指标——仅为13%。赛义德医生告诉CBS News，正常的射血分数范围在55%至70%之间。
当时只有两种选择：植入一种名为Impella的心脏辅助装置，让心脏得到休息并观察是否能恢复，或是将古尔德列入心脏移植等待名单。赛义德医生决定先尝试植入辅助装置，通过她的股动脉完成了操作。接下来的两天，古尔德在重症监护室昏迷，依靠呼吸机维持生命。慢慢地，她的身体开始恢复。
古尔德苏醒后，见到丈夫和刚出生的儿子时欣喜若狂。她完全不知道自己经历了什么。
“我以为可能是剖腹产时大出血了之类的。直到医生们过来，都没人跟我解释过我当时在心脏重症监护室，”古尔德说，“他们跟我说我的心脏衰竭了，那感觉真的非常怪异。”
什么是围产期心肌病？
据纽约大学朗格尼分校成人先天性心脏病项目副医务主任、该院产科心脏病项目成员亚当·斯莫尔医生介绍，古尔德患上的是围产期心肌病——一种罕见病症，会在妊娠晚期或产后不久自发出现心脏功能减弱。斯莫尔医生表示，这种病症大约每5000次妊娠中会出现1例。
斯莫尔医生说，很难预测哪些人会受此病症影响。社会经济因素、高龄产妇以及既往妊娠史都会增加患病风险。“你完全不知道它什么时候会发作，这正是它最可怕的地方。”
他表示，患者可能会出现呼吸急促等预警信号。古尔德感受到的不祥预感，可能是由肺部积液或血压骤降引起的，他补充道。
斯莫尔医生指出，并非所有围产期心肌病患者都需要剖腹产。只有当医生认为常规阴道分娩会给孕妇心脏带来过大压力时，才需要进行剖腹产。患上围产期心肌病的患者需要先稳定病情，随后让心脏得到休息和恢复的时间，而Impella辅助装置为古尔德提供了这样的条件。
“堪称奇迹的康复”
古尔德在重症监护室待了9天。回到家的日子“格外艰难”，她说。她不仅要从大型手术中恢复，还要和丈夫一起照顾刚出生的婴儿。最初，她不想了解自己身上到底发生了什么。但很快，她开始向家人询问，并查阅自己的病历。
“那是许多人人生中最创伤的一晚。这段经历太艰难了，”古尔德说，“现在去了解当时的情况，感觉就像不是发生在自己身上一样。”
如今，古尔德的射血分数已经恢复到正常水平。她仍需持续服药，并将在余生中定期看心脏病专家。不过，她大概率不会再要孩子了。斯莫尔医生表示，即便患者完全从围产期心肌病中康复，再次妊娠也会被视为高风险情况。
“我能从当时的状态恢复到现在，简直堪称奇迹，”古尔德说。
一路走来，成为一名母亲“一直是我的梦想”，古尔德说道。她的宝宝如今已经1岁，健康又活泼，已经能睡整觉，还开始上游泳课。最近，她在凤凰城的一场医学会议上分享了自己的故事，还自豪地带着儿子登上了舞台。她还受邀前往Impella公司位于波士顿的总部，并且正计划带着家人去蒙大拿州的冰川国家公园旅行。
“我有机会成为他的妈妈，成为一名妻子，还能好好活着，做很多事情。那些小事都让我特别开心，比如今年夏天，他已经能坐在自行车后座上，我们一起骑车出游，”古尔德说，“每一天都像礼物一样。我知道这话很老套，大家都这么说，但每个清晨都像圣诞节一样美好。”
编辑： 亚历克斯·桑德比
The scary symptom that a mom’s labor was about to become a fight to survive: “I think I’m about to die”
April 18, 2026 / 8:00 AM EDT / CBS News
By
Kerry Breen News Editor
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
Read Full Bio
Casey Gould wanted to be a mom her entire life. For a long time, it seemed like her dream wouldn’t come true: She and her husband suffered three miscarriages, and infertility treatments weren’t helping. In January 2024, Gould and her husband decided to stop trying. A month later, she was pregnant.
Gould was worried, but her pregnancy was easy. She loved being pregnant. Her baby moved around all the time. There had been some swelling in the final stages of her pregnancy, but her doctors weren’t concerned. When she finally went into labor, she wasn’t worried about giving birth at all — she was just excited to meet her son.
“You think you’re in the home stretch. You’re good, you’re healthy, he’s healthy. All you have to do is get the baby here,” Gould, 33, said. She went into labor on Nov. 1, 2024.
Casey Gould at her baby shower in September 2024. Casey Gould
Her labor was long — it took 36 hours for her to be ready to push. At that point, “everything kind of felt wrong,” she said. Her vitals looked good, and an epidural was controlling her pain, but Gould was suddenly gripped by “a sense of dread.”
“I was telling myself not to freak out, and then right behind the doctor, as she walked by, I saw, like, a black shadow. It’s hard to explain, but if you looked in the corner of the room, it was almost like black shadows enveloping that corner,” Gould said. “And then I looked over to where the nurses were, and it started to happen over there too. When the doctor came back over to my bedside, I grabbed her, and I grabbed a nurse, and I said, ‘Something’s wrong. I think I’m about to die.’”
An emergency surgery and dayslong coma
Right after Gould spoke, her son’s heart rate dropped off. Gould was rushed to an operating room and sedated for an emergency C-section. Her son was delivered within minutes. Then doctors realized Gould’s heart was failing.
Cardiologist Dr. Amer Sayed was called in. He found Gould’s ejection fraction, the measure of how well the heart can pump blood, was just 13%. Normal ejection fraction function is between 55% and 70%, Sayed told CBS News.
There were only two options: Place a device called an Impella pump that would give her heart time to rest and see if that helped, or put Gould on the list for a heart transplant. Sayed decided to try the pump, and placed it through her femoral artery. Gould spent the next two days in a coma in the intensive care unit, on a ventilator. Slowly, her body began to recover.
When Gould awoke, she was thrilled to see her husband and newborn son. She had no idea what had happened.
“I thought maybe I hemorrhaged during the C-section or something. Nobody really explained that I was in the cardiac ICU until those doctors came in,” Gould said. “For them to explain to me that my heart had failed was really, really weird.”
Casey Gould and her son while she was on a ventilator. Casey Gould
What is peripartum cardiomyopathy?
Gould had experienced peripartum cardiomyopathy, a rare condition that occurs when the heart spontaneously weakens in late-stage pregnancy or shortly after giving birth, according to Dr. Adam Small, the associate medical director of NYU Langone’s Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program in New York and a member of the hospital’s cardio-obstetrics program. The condition occurs in about 1 of every 5,000 pregnancies, Small said.
It’s hard to predict who will be affected by the condition, Small said. Socioeconomic factors, higher maternal age and previous pregnancies can put a person at more risk. “You don’t really know when it’s going to happen, which is kind of what’s so scary about it,” Small said.
Small said patients may experience warning signs like shortness of breath. Gould’s feeling of dread could have been caused by fluid in her lungs or plummeting blood pressure, he said.
Not all peripartum cardiomyopathy cases require a C-section delivery, Small said. It’s only necessary when doctors think a pregnant patient’s heart would be put under too much stress during a traditional vaginal delivery. Patients who experience peripartum cardiomyopathy need to be stabilized, and then their heart needs to be given time to rest and recover, Small said. The Impella pump allowed that for Gould.
An illustration of an Impella pump in a human heart. Impella / Abiomed
A “pretty miraculous” recovery
Gould was in the ICU for nine days. Coming home was “really hard,” she said. Not only did she have to recover from major surgery, she and her husband were juggling a newborn. At first, she didn’t want to know more about what had happened to her. But soon, she started asking her family and reading her medical files.
“This was the most traumatic night of a lot of people’s lives. It’s been hard,” Gould said. “Learning about it, it doesn’t feel like it happened to me.”
Gould’s ejection fraction measurements are now back to normal levels. She continues to take medication and will regularly see a cardiologist for the rest of her life. However, she likely will not have another baby. Small said that even in cases where a person fully recovers from peripartum cardiomyopathy, future pregnancies are considered high-risk.
“The fact that I went from where I was to where I am now is pretty miraculous,” Gould said.
Casey Gould, her husband and her son on his first birthday. Casey Gould
Through it all, being a mom “has been a dream,” Gould said. Her baby is now a happy, healthy 1-year-old who has started sleeping through the night and taking swimming lessons. She recently shared her story at a medical conference in Phoenix and was proud to bring her son onstage with her. She has also been invited to Impella’s Boston headquarters and is planning a family trip to Montana’s Glacier National Park.
“I get this chance to be his mom and be a wife and to still be here and do things. It’s just the little things, like going on bike rides this summer now that he’s big enough to sit in the bike carrier,” Gould said. “Every day feels like a gift. I know that’s silly, people say it a lot, but every morning kind of feels like Christmas.”
Edited by Alex Sundby