Medical advance helps deliver Mother's Day joy

"I was willing to do anything," mother Eliz Greene says. "If I had to hang upside down by my toes I would have to make sure the babies were born healthy"

From Rhonda Rowland
CNN Medical Unit

(CNN) -- It's something she longed for and almost missed. But thanks to advances in medical technology, Eliz Greene is celebrating her first Mother's Day.

She and her husband Clay tried for five years to have a baby, and a combination of fertility drugs and surgery finally worked for them. Then came a surprise.

"Once I saw the second heartbeat, I was like, `Oh my Lord, there are going to be two babies inside of me,'" she said.

It was a difficult pregnancy -- contractions started early, bed rest and medications were prescribed. By her sixth month, a room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin became her home.

Then, last November 12, her condition quickly deteriorated.

"I was in real pain, and I knew that something was wrong. It felt like something heavy was sitting on my chest," she said.

Cardiac arrest

Her perinatologist, Dr. Margaret Carr, happened to be at the nurses' station, and knew it was something serious.

"All of a sudden she put her eyes back and she became unconscious and she had no pulse," Carr said.

Greene was in cardiac arrest. Specialists were brought in and CPR started.

"You could say that she was dead for several minutes," said Dr. Husam Balkhy, a cardiothoracic surgeon.

"The babies were dying, their movements had stopped," added Dr. Robert Wakefield, a cardiologist.

The Greene twins were delivered safely by C-section. Their mom then underwent bypass heart surgery

"We were dealing with three lives that were at stake. The two babies and the mom and usually the algorithm is such that if the mother's life is in jeopardy, we do what's necessary to save the mom," Balkhy explained.

Doctors' dilemma

Although doctors do what's necessary to save a mother if her life is in jeopardy, Wakefield said they didn't know if they would resuscitate her quickly enough, or whether they should try to deliver the babies.

They took a chance and shocked Greene's heart.

She was taken to the cardiac catheterization lab, where the staff was standing by, due to a last-minute cancellation.

"It became very obvious during this procedure that she had a spontaneous tear of an artery in the front of the heart, and we knew the only thing that was appropriate was heart surgery, open-heart surgery," Wakefield said.

Specifically, bypass surgery.

"Can we do this on somebody who is carrying babies? The answer is you could -- it's been done in the past. But was it really necessary to put the babies through this, and the answer was no," Wakefield said.

First, the twins were delivered by C-section, then the bypass operation began.

High-tech alternative

Greene wasn't out of the woods yet. Could she endure the rigors of having her heart stopped, and being put on a heart/lung machine during the surgery?

Doctors thought it would be dangerous, but they had a new high-tech alternative. While the heart continues beating, a device is used to stabilize just the part of the heart being worked on.

Seventeen hours after her heart surgery, Greene met her daughters for the first time in the neonatal intensive care unit.

"The best thing was when he came to tell me that we had girls," Greene said of her husband. "That was the first time I saw him after surgery and he was glowing. You've never seen anyone so in love with his daughters. He was so proud and was happy that I was OK."

The beating-heart surgery may have contributed to Greene's relatively short and uncomplicated recovery.

"I can do whatever I want and have been for months. I take the girls out by myself. I carry whatever I need to carry. I can care for the girls by myself essentially and I don't think that would have been possible," she said.

Doctors say Greene's condition is uncommon -- that she survived it is rare.

"The fact that we moved along quickly and the right people were in place was incredibly fortunate," Wakefield said.

"With a little bit of help from God, we have modern technology on our side," Carr added.

After all that, is motherhood all that Greene hoped it would be?

"Even on the bad days, when they cry for three hours and I don't know why, it's still a great day," she said. "I am so grateful and blessed to have these girls and to have my husband and to have a family that we worked for and hoped for, for so long. And here they are."