Pregnant car-crash victim wakes from coma to meet her three-day-old son

A mother and her newborn son are both lucky to be alive today.

Wei Liu was eight months pregnant when she was critically injured in a car crash in Manchester, England, on May 3.

The taxi Wei, 30, and her boyfriend Geng Yu, 24, were riding in was struck by a car. Wei suffered a severed artery above her heart, fractured ribs and a shattered pelvis. Her odds of survival were not promising.

She was rushed to Manchester Royal Infirmary where doctors fought to keep her alive — and performed an emergency caesarean to deliver her son, Lucas, a month early.

Wei awoke from a coma three days later to discover that she was no longer pregnant.

Also see: Mom dies, gives birth, then comes back to live

"The last thing I remember is the taxi turning across Great Ancoats Street as I was on the phone to a friend. The next thing, I woke up with people all around me. I had something in my mouth so I couldn’t speak but I realized my belly had gone smaller and my baby was gone," she tells the Manchester Evening News.

"Because I couldn’t talk I kept just touching my belly and heard people saying, 'Your baby is fine.'"

Wei recognizes that both her and her baby boy are lucky to be alive.

"I found out later the doctors had told my boyfriend to be prepared because they hadn’t seen that many people survive things like this before," she says.

"I think at one point he was asked if he would rather save me or the baby. He was in the next bed shouting and saw my friend crying because my heart had stopped beating for a few seconds and they thought I was dead. A few days later I woke up again and Geng was there in a wheelchair. That was when I got to hold Lucas for the first time."

Also see: Woman gives birth among rubble after Bangladesh building collapse

"I still can’t work out how I survived," she adds. "I just feel so lucky to be alive and that Lucas is okay."

Wei, who also a fractured cheekbone and a broken foot in the crash — and needed 48 stitches on her head — is now recovering at home. She remains in a wheelchair and has some memory problems.

"Her and her baby’s lives really were in serious danger. But after surgery, within a few days she was ready to be awake," intensive care registrar Dr. Tuheen Huda tells the Manchester Evening News. "Her mum had come over from China and I took her off the ventilator and introduced them, then about an hour later we brought her baby in so she could see him for the first time. It was incredibly emotional."

The driver of the car was not injured and was arrested at the scene of the crash on suspicion of dangerous driving causing serious injury.

In Texas this May, expectant mother Erica Nigrelli died, gave birth — and lived to tell about it.