Sharista Giles: Mother of Pregnant Woman in Coma Says She Knew Daughter Would Wake Up
— -- Even when doctors told Anna Moser her pregnant daughter would never wake up from her coma, she knew it wasn't true.
Sharista Giles, of Sweetwater, Tennessee, was four months pregnant when a car accident landed her in a coma in December. She woke up earlier this month to learn she'd had the baby, whom they'd called "baby L" as a placeholder until she could name him herself.
"I've had people to tell me, 'Do you think she'll ever wake up?'" Moser told ABC affiliate WATE. "And I knew she would. I didn't know how long. A lot of the mothers I talked to, their child woke up way before her except for two that I've stayed in contact with. ... But I knew. I knew it was going to happen."
Giles, 20, had a traumatic brain injury and was unresponsive at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. At one point, she had a 108-degree fever and seemed to be taking a turn for the worse, her mother told WATE. About two months after the accident, in January, doctors had to deliver the baby.
On April 8, four months and two days after the accident, Giles, who had been moved to a rehab center, opened her eyes. She's not verbal and still has a surgically created hole in the front of her neck to help her breathe, but she follows her family members -- and photos of the baby -- with her eyes, her aunt told ABC News the day after she woke up.
"[Her father] showed her a picture of her baby, and she followed the picture," she said. "When he turned around to put it back on the bulletin board, she turned her neck, her whole head, trying to follow and find the picture again."
Still, Moser told WATE, she wasn't sure her daughter was aware.
"I said, if you can get out of that bed right now, I could take you home,' and her head came up, and she had never did that. It was plum off the bed. That's when I knew," Moser told the station. "I finally have not a doubt in my mind, and I needed that."
Baby L, whom they now call Leighton, was just released from the neonatal intensive care unit, according to WATE.
Giles hasn't met the baby in person yet because doctors don't want him to enter the rehab facility, her aunt Beverly Giles told ABC News. But if the weather is warm later today, the family might take Giles outside to meet her son, she said.
