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Doctors at Packard Children's Hospital and Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto weren't sure if they could save Michelle Mattingly and her unborn, premature baby last August when they treated her for a liver-failure-induced coma.

Now, Mattingly and baby John, born 14 weeks prematurely, are about to celebrate the Christmas holidays.

Michelle Mattingly and her husband, John, came to Packard Hospital Aug. 3 because Michelle was experiencing pain and nausea. By the next day, she slipped into a coma, according to Robert Dicks, a Packard Hospital spokesman.

"We were treading into unknown territory," according to Dr. Maurice Druzin, the Packard obstetrician who delivered John. Druzin is chief of obstetrics and specializes in high-risk deliveries.

Physicians decided that a cesarean birth would have been risky for the mother, so they opted to wait for a liver donor for a transplant operation.

"With the mother in that condition, she would have died from a cesarean, no question," Dr. Carlos Esquivel, chief of the division of transplantation surgery at Packard and Stanford hospitals, said. "Patients in liver failure cannot tolerate the stress of surgery."

"They told us we had 72 hours to get her a new liver," Michelle's husband, John, said.

After two possible donor livers were rejected for medical reasons, a third was found and a successful transplant operation occurred on Aug. 8. The baby, John, was successfully delivered after his mother recovered from the surgery and has stayed at Packard Hospital in its neonate unit for three months.

"To end up with the mom and child surviving all this is unbelievable," Esquivel said.

Now, Michelle and John Mattingly, who live in Sunnyvale, their daughter, Elecktra, and the baby, John, are preparing to celebrate Christmas.

"We're going to go a little crazy with gifts for the kids," Michelle Mattingly said.

-- Don Kazak