9:28am Wednesday 3rd March 2010
By Nicola Fifield
A MOTHER who almost died when she lost four pints of blood after giving birth to her daughter is to run the Jane Tomlinson York 10k in aid of York Hospital’s maternity unit.
Dawn Theaker, of Acomb, York, said she wanted to raise funds for the maternity unit as a thank-you to the staff who saved her life last June.
The 29-year-old suffered a postpartum haemorrhage shortly after her daughter, Millie, was delivered by Caesarean section, and required a six-hour blood transfusion.
She said: “I was having a planned C-section because my daughter was breach and everything should have been straightforward.
“But a couple of hours after the C-section I started to feel really hot and faint. My husband pulled back the bed sheets to cool me down and there was just blood everywhere.
“I had lost half the amount of blood in my body and there was a chance I might not have survived.”
She said Millie, who is now eight-months-old, was born healthily – but her husband, Simon, 29, who works as a design engineer, did not cope so well.
“Our daughter was the healthiest one out of us because my husband passed out twice during the transfusion,” she said.
“Ironically, he was actually due to give blood the day that Millie was born.”
Dawn, who works in marketing at the National Railway Museum, said: “The staff were so caring and supporting.
“They couldn’t do enough for us and the next morning one of the nurses who had helped me came back in to see how I was, even though she wasn’t even on shift.
“I can’t give enough praise for them and I just want to give something back because without them I wouldn’t be here having fun with Millie today.”
Dawn will join thousands of other runners for the Jane Tomlinson York 10K on Sunday, August 1. To sponsor her, email dawntheaker@googlemail.com To enter the run, or to volunteer for the event, visit runforall.com
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