Teenager wakes up from coma believing she had raised kids for 7 years in alternate life

‘I felt an overwhelming wave of love’

The 19-year-old, Clélia Verdier from France, said that she remembers the agonising pain of labour and the joy of holding her daughters for the first time.

She added that she even recalls the devastation when one of her babies died soon after.

But she never was a mum, as she was never pregnant or went into labour in the first place.

What in fact happened was that the whole time she was in a medically-induced coma.

What really happened to the teenager

She isn’t the first to dream up a whole life for themselves while in a coma, only to wake up and discover that none of it was real.

For Verdier, it was especially complicated to realise that the babies she felt like she had given birth to never even existed.

As she spoke to the Daily Mail, she explained that “she made a serious suicide attempt by taking a large amount of medication” in June 2025.

Then, for three weeks she was put into a medically-induced coma.

During the coma, she said she remembers having “extremely intense” dreams and nightmares.

The dream in which she became a mother has stuck with her, in particular.

It all seemed so real and she could feel both physical and emotional pain throughout the hallucination, she explained.

“I could feel so many things. When I dreamed about giving birth, I felt the stress. I also felt a lot of pain”, she recalled.

“In this dream, I gave birth to triplets, which I named Mila, Miles, and Maïlée. Maïlée died shortly after birth. I felt so awful - overwhelmed with sadness and guilt.”

She added that “it was incredible. I felt an overwhelming wave of love”.

The realistic dream spanned across seven years and she even got to watch her daughters grow up, even though she was only in the coma for three weeks.

“I remember walks, meals we shared and bedtime stories”, she added.

The first thing she did after waking up from the coma was ask the medical staff where here children were, as she revealed “she loved them with all her heart”.

She was told her children didn’t exist

“'I was so convinced it was real that the first time I saw my parents again, I told them they were grandparents”, Verdier said.

“That's when they told me they didn't exist. It was a shock”.

The realisation that the seven years she had spent with her daughters had all been made up inside her head was extremely difficult, the teenager said.

As nearly a year has passed since then, she says that she is still struggling with the pain.

“Now I feel very disconnected from others. I still miss [my daughters] today”, she said.

“I lived as a mother - even if it was ‘just a dream’, with everything I felt and experienced, I will always be their mother. It was my only reality for a while.”