A 28-YEAR-OLD woman collapsed and died just weeks before giving birth to her first child, an inquest heard.

Lucy Copland was due to give birth at the end of November last year, but was rushed to hospital on October 18 after collapsing at home in Malton.

An inquest in Scarborough last Thursday was told her partner, Jamie Wright, who she had been with for four years and lived together for a year and a half, found his girlfriend slumped in the corner of their kitchen making a gagging noise.

In a statement written by Jamie read out at the inquest last Thursday, he said that the couple had spent the day together before visiting Lucy’s sister Becci Woollard at her home in Norton for the evening.

The couple had returned home later that evening and Lucy had gone to watch TV, while Jamie went upstairs to watch something else.

Jamie said that he had gone back downstairs to start making something for the couple to eat before going back upstairs.

He said: “After about five minutes I heard some noise so I shouted Lucy, but she didn’t respond so I ran downstairs.

“I found her slumped in the corner of the kitchen. She was making a gagging noise and she had vomited.”

Lucy was taken to Scarborough Hospital, but despite the efforts of the ambulance crew and hospital staff they were unable to save her and her baby son, Seth.

The inquest heard that Lucy and Jamie were “overjoyed” at the news that they were expecting a baby.

She had enjoyed a normal pregnancy and had had her last scan the Friday before she died where she was told everything was as it should be.

Experts in neurology and heart pathology examined Lucy as part of a post-mortem examination, but all results came back negative in terms of finding anything wrong with her.

Lucy had suffered from epileptic seizures when she was younger and her father had been fitted with a pacemaker after having transient ischaemic attacks (TIA) where his heart would stop beating before re-starting itself, but pathologist Dr Jan Lowe said that neither of these had played a part in Lucy’s death.

Dr Lowe said that Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SAD) was the most likely cause of death.

SAD affects people under the age of 35 and in up to one in five cases of sudden cardiac deaths in young people no definite cause of death can be found.

Coroner Michael Oakley recorded a decision of natural causes.