Family members of a 23-year-old Lewiston woman are searching for answers after she experienced complications during childbirth and died a few days later.

Destiny Crockett had a healthy pregnancy, but she was put on life support after the delivery of her second child, a baby girl, family members said.

A spokesman for Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, where the baby was born, confirmed that Crockett was admitted as a patient on April 20 but would not say any more about her care, citing state and federal privacy laws and respect for the family.

Hospital spokesman Chuck Gill emailed a statement to the Portland Press Herald on Monday.

“There has been ongoing communication and support for this patient’s family since this event happened on April 20. We have expressed our condolences and are doing everything possible to support them through this tragic situation,” Gill said. “Central Maine Medical Center takes patient safety very seriously. An extensive internal review of all aspects of this patient’s care is being conducted to identify the root causes of this event.”

Crockett’s father and a sister said they would like some answers.

“I said my final goodbyes today before they took her off life support,” Wilbur Crockett, Destiny’s father, said Monday night. Crockett, whose third floor apartment at 202 Elm St. in Biddeford was destroyed Saturday by fire, said he consented to having his daughter’s organs donated.

“I feel something good should come out of this even though it is a terrible loss for our family,” he said.

Teasha Crockett, Destiny’s younger sister, said doctors harvested seven organs Tuesday, and she hoped the donations would save others’ lives. That’s what her sister would have wished.

“She was very loving and would do anything for anyone,” she said.

She described her sister as a healthy young mother to an 8-year-old girl. The newborn was admitted to Maine Medical Center in Portland. The family members said the delivery included use of an epidural anesthetic, commonly used during deliveries to ease the mother’s pain.

Dr. Daniel Campos, a partner at Spectrum Medical Group in South Portland and an attending anesthesiologist at Maine Medical Center, said life-threatening complications resulting from an epidural are “extremely rare.”

“It’s a very safe practice,” Campos said. “When we quote risk factors, we say those types of serious complications are to the magnitude of one out of hundreds of thousands of cases.”

The infant’s father, Dwain Coughlin of Lewiston, who was with Crockett during labor, declined to comment for this story. 

Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

dhoey@pressherald.com

Joe Lawlor can be contacted at 791-6376 or at:

jlawlor@pressherald.com

Twitter: @joelawlorph