YouTuber Develops Undetected Birth Complication, Ends Up in a Coma (Exclusive)

It began with a dream come true.

When Kate Albrecht and Joey Zehr — the couple behind the YouTube channel Mr. Kate — welcomed their second baby together, they were so happy to finally realize a dream that Kate had been wanting for so long — to birth a baby naturally.

After the couple welcomed their son Moon in 2019 via caesarean section, Kate hoped she’d be able to go through that “magical” experience of a home birth. And although she was able to give birth to her second baby, daughter Mars, who was born naturally on Thursday, May 22, things took a turn for the worse when she developed a rare medical complication that resulted in a medical coma.

“I always thought that the home birth thing sounded really magical,” Kate tells PEOPLE. “But being first-time parents and everything, the hospital was a more comforting option.”

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When she found out she was pregnant again, Kate knew she wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. “I was really inspired and thought, ‘Okay, this is my chance,'” she remembers. “I only thought I was going to have one other kid.”

“This is my second kid, my last pregnancy. Let me challenge myself and go for this,” adds Kate.

Joey explains that the two ended up doing dual-care, which is when the mom sees an OB-GYN during their pregnancy, as well as a midwife. “We wanted the flexibility to be able to change our mind at any point,” he says.

The couple consulted with their midwife and ensured they had both a hospital plan and a transfer plan in place before embarking on this journey. When Kate entered labor naturally, she was home in her house in Hawaii.

“It was really a mind-over-matter experience for myself, which is another reason why I wanted to do it,” says Kate. “I really prepared physically and mentally and spiritually for this to just have the affirmations ready and really just trying to coach myself through it.”

Finally, after nearly 24 hours of labor, Kate gave birth to daughter Mars, who was born en caul, which means the baby was still inside the intact amniotic sac.

“They call it ‘the veil’ in a lot of cultures. It sort of has a symbolism of being magical, like a shaman, or they have a connection to the other side,” Kate explains. “That was really meaningful to me too, because my grandmother had passed away while I was pregnant.”

“One of my affirmations that I kept repeating was, ‘My baby and I are a team. We can do this together,’ ” she continues. “So it was just so crazy when she finally came out, and I pushed her out. I was able to reach down into the [birthing tub] and grab her and pull her up onto my chest.”

“We were so happy we had our baby,” adds Joey.

The two reveled in the fact that they’d been able to achieve Kate’s dream, and spent the next few days in baby bliss. Since she’d had a tear during labor, Kate had to go to the hospital to get stitched up, and also underwent a general checkup. The doctors told her everything was fine. But two weeks later, things took a turn for the worse.

As she tried to enjoy postpartum, Kate realized that she was experiencing some weird symptoms. She’d get pretty bad headaches, which she wrote off as a normal migraine, but they didn’t go away.

“I was so tired and so sore. I felt like, ‘Wait, this is supposed to be easier. I’m supposed to recover from a natural childbirth easier than a surgery,’ but I was bedridden,” Kate remembers.

“You had been going to the doctor,” adds Joey. “It’s the same OB that does deliveries. No one really flagged anything beyond just, ‘This is the healing process.'”

Along with the headaches and fatigue, Kate had a sore mid-back and voiced her concerns to the doctor when she had her stitches checked. “[They] just said, ‘Oh yeah, well, you went through natural childbirth. Oh, you’re a migrainer. You have headaches,’ ” she says.

One day, Kate was home with a family friend and started to feel woozy. She gave her friend baby Mars and said she was going to take a nap. But when she started to walk down her hallway, she fell over and hit the wall. “I was starting to just not be able to think clearly,” says Kate. “She put me in bed, and that’s actually where my memory stops.”

Joey was out of the house. He’d taken their son Moon to a friend’s birthday party and was driving back from the event when he got a phone call from the friend who was with Kate. “She was just like, ‘Hey, does Kate normally get so lethargic when she has migraines?’ ” Joey remembers her asking.

Joey wasn’t sure. But since he was just down the road, he told the friend to wait until he got home. As he pulled up to their house, he noticed that someone was filming a movie on their street and that there was a security guard sitting in a chair outside their driveway.

“I walk into the room, and Kate’s lying in bed with blood coming out of her mouth and clearly unconscious,” Joey recalls, getting emotional. “So I immediately jump on the bed and yell at her, and she won’t wake up.”

Joey called 911 and then remembered that there was a film crew on their block, who most likely had a medic on set. He sent the couple’s friend to go see if the medic could come up to their house and assist Kate. Luckily, there was.

“Then Kate started having seizures in the room, which was terrible to watch,” Joey says. He gave the medic and the firefighters all of Kate’s medical information, who pretty quickly guessed she had eclampsia.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, eclampsia is seizures that occur in pregnant or postpartum women with preeclampsia, which is a blood pressure condition that occurs during pregnancy. Symptoms of eclampsia include high blood pressure, headaches, blurry vision and convulsions.

Kate had a seizure in bed and another seizure in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She was also immediately intubated.

“At that point, she was then in a medical coma,” Joey remembers. “I was f—— freaking out because basically the big thing that they worry about with seizures is brain bleeds.”

Kate was rushed to get CT scans on her head, chest and abdomen. Once the labs started to come back, Joey was relieved to learn that Kate hadn’t suffered any brain bleeds. Eventually, she was transferred from the emergency room to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Joey stayed by Kate’s side, even though visiting hours were over the minute she was transferred to the ICU. “I was prepared to spend the night,” he remembers. “I ended up forcing myself to stay there until 10 p.m. or something.”

“‘I kept telling them also, ‘If she is remotely conscious at any point,’ this is another reason I didn’t want to leave is, ‘You have to tell her her babies are okay, because as soon as she has any kind of awareness, she’s going to immediately go to ‘I was in a car wreck and everyone died,’ or something like that,” Joey says. “She needed to know her babies are okay.”

He spent the night calling the nurse every 45 minutes, trying to get updates on his wife. By morning, she’d passed a breathing test, which was a good sign. Joey returned to the hospital, where doctors were doing rounds.

When the doctor came in, he asked Joey for Kate’s name. “Then he just looked at her and he yelled super loud,” Joey says. “He just yelled in her face, ‘Kate!’ She opened her eyes, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.'”

The next few moments were a bit chaotic. Kate’s tube was taken out, and Joey rushed to tell his wife what had happened before any confusion started. “I was like, ‘You had eclampsia. Yeah, the babies are fine.’ You’re like, ‘What’s eclampsia? What’s that?'” he recalls telling Kate.

Kate had to stay in the ICU for the rest of the day, but was eventually transferred back into labor and delivery. Doctors had also found a blood clot in one of Kate’s kidney veins, which accounted for the pain in her back. She was then discharged on June 9, a day before their son Moon’s birthday, and sent home on blood thinners.

“But I think the craziest thing about it all is that I think most people in pregnancy don’t necessarily know about…we were so prepared,” Joey says. “We knew so much information. Yet, we had no idea that two weeks after giving birth, we should be watching for preeclampsia, eclampsia.”

“Because even during my pregnancy, I had gotten the blood tests and done the urine tests for preeclampsia, where they checked to make sure you’re not expelling protein in your urine and all this stuff, and I had checked out fine,” Kate explains.

“In hindsight, during those two weeks knowing that she had some headaches, she probably was developing preeclampsia, but we didn’t really know to be watching,” adds the dad of two. “We were prepared for everything except the one [thing] that happened.”

After the terrifying few days the couple had, Kate was overcome with emotion when she returned home to their house in Hawaii. “Pulling up in the driveway, my son had come out with my sister and she was holding my baby,” she remembers. “My dad had flown in and my sister had flown in when they got the emergency call.”

“It was just so emotional because to be away from my 5-year-old was hard, but being away from my newborn was really, really hard for me,” says Kate. “I didn’t want her to come to the hospital and visit because I didn’t want her to have to ride in the car and be around the hospital germs and everything.”

Kate remembers concentrating on feeling lucky when she saw her daughter for the first time in two days. “Instead of feeling sad about it, just feeling hopeful and lucky that I am home and I got through this,” she says. “But holding my baby and being able to smell her newborn smell again and everything, it was everything. It was just what I was holding onto while I was lying in the hospital bed.”

For Joey, the past few days had been a nightmare. From witnessing Kate have seizures and advocating for her health in the hospital to caring for their two young kids, it was a more than overwhelming 48 hours. He says he’s lucky to be able to rely on their village.

“I think one of our fears when we moved to Hawaii, because it’s so far…Kate’s family’s on the East Coast, my family’s in the Midwest, so far from our support system,” Joey says. “So one of our fears had always been like, ‘Do we have a support system? Do we have a community here?’ Man, it comes through so hard that we do, and it was amazing.”

“Because I was a mess. I hadn’t slept. When I got home that first night, there was no way I was going to sleep,” he remembers. “Everyone was taking shifts with Mars, our daughter. It was a lot to juggle. But I was really fortunate because I was able to focus on Kate.”

“Our community showed up, and I just needed Kate to be better,” he says. “That was my number one concern. So when she was finally able to come home, it was just such a relief and just such a big out-breath finally.”

Now, the couple is just trying to find some sense of normalcy after a tumultuous beginning.

“When I first came home, I was just exhausted and lying around with my newborn, enjoying some sunshine and stuff,” Kate says. “Then I’ve just been feeling better each day, feeling stronger each day, really comforted by the fact that this is known to be a one-time occurrence, and it’s caused by the blood pressure.”

In the days since, Kate’s also been doing a lot of reflecting on the situation. “This was literally my worst nightmare,” she says. “One worry that I always had was something happening to me that would take me away from my kids, and that happened and happened when my baby was small.”

She’s trying to find the positives in the situation, and one that she’s able to realize is that although something terrible happened, she’s okay now. “My family is okay. They’re thriving. My baby’s thriving. She’s fine, and I’m good and getting better every day.”

“I’m trying to make this into a positive, trying to find the positive in this horrendous experience,” says Kate.

Joey is able to bring some of that positivity, noting that he’s just so proud of his wife for finally accomplishing one of her biggest dreams.

“I’m just amazed that Kate was able to have a natural childbirth because I was with her every second of the journey, and I just saw in her eyes how hard it was and how she had to go to a different world in order to finish it,” he says. “That was the happiest day of our lives along with the birth of our first child, obviously, and then mixed with, two weeks later, the worst day of our life.”