I lived an entire life while I was in a coma and even gave birth to triplets… I was devastated that none of it was real

Clélia Verdier has vivid memories of giving birth to triplets. She remembers the agonizing pain of childbirth, the joy of holding her daughters for the first time, and the devastation when one died soon after.

The only catch? She has never been pregnant, never given birth, and never been a mother. In reality, he was in a medically induced coma in the hospital the entire time.

Verdier is not the first person to dream of a whole life for himself while in a coma; When he wakes up, he discovers that none of this is real.

But for Verdier, a 19-year-old from Lyon, France, it was especially complicated to realize that the babies she felt she was giving birth to did not exist at all.

He revealed to the Daily Mail that in June 2025 he ‘made a serious suicide attempt by taking large amounts of medication’ and was placed in a medically induced coma for three weeks.

He recalls having “extremely intense” dreams and nightmares while in a coma, but because he “wasn’t aware he was in a coma” at the time, they “became his reality.”

One dream in particular never leaves her mind: the dream in which she became a mother.

He explained that it seemed very real and that he could feel both physical and emotional pain throughout the hallucination.

‘I could feel so many things. When I dreamed that I was giving birth, I felt stressed. “I also felt a lot of pain,” he recalled.

‘In this dream I gave birth to triplets, whom I named Mila, Miles and Maïlée. Maïlée died shortly after birth. I felt so bad; I was overcome with sadness and guilt.’

Verdier even remembers the first ‘skin-to-skin contact’ with her babies.

‘It was incredible. “I felt an overwhelming wave of love,” he added.

Although she was in a coma for only three weeks, she said her realistic dream spanned seven years, meaning she got to watch her daughters grow up.

She said each of her daughters had different personalities: One was ‘quite shy’ and the other was ‘very energetic’.

‘I remember the walks, the meals we shared and the bedtime stories,’ she added.

She ‘loved them with all her heart’ and when she finally woke up from her coma the first thing she did was ask medical staff where her children were.

The only catch? Never been pregnant, never given birth and never been a mother ( stock image )

He said he was in a coma for only three weeks, but his realistic dream spanned seven years.

‘That’s when they told me they didn’t exist. “It was a shock,” he said. ‘I was so convinced it was real that when I saw my parents for the first time I told them they were grandparents.’

Verdier said it was extremely difficult for her to realize that the entire seven years she spent with her daughters were fictionalized in her head.

And now, almost a year later, she is still struggling with the pain of the ordeal.

‘I feel very disconnected from others now,’ he admitted. ‘I still miss you [my daughters] Today.

‘I lived as a mother; Even if it’s ‘just a dream’, I will always be their mother with everything I feel and experience. That was my only reality for a while.’

The 19-year-old said she hopes to have real children one day, but added: ‘They will have a different place in my heart, but they are just as important.’

Verdier is not the first person to experience this. In 2021, a woman named Caroline Leavitt wrote an article for: Psychology Todaytitled, While In a Coma, I Dreamed of a Whole Other Life – I’m Still Dreaming.

He revealed to the Daily Mail that in June 2025 he ‘made a serious suicide attempt by taking large amounts of medication’ and fell into a medically induced coma.

‘When I woke up it felt as if someone had violently pulled me from one world I knew to another, as if I had stepped from one room to another,’ he wrote.

‘I started talking to my husband Jeff and my friends Nancy and Lindy, who sit next to me every day, about living in this imaginary town and how incredible it was.

‘There were all these shops and it was hard to get to my flat, but it was big and beautiful and I knew the streets and the people and I knew it was real.’

Claire Wineland, who was in a coma for two weeks for medical reasons, said: ABC In 2015, he said he had vivid dreams of visiting Alaska, even though he had never been to the state in real life.

‘I’ve never been to Alaska. “I never paid any attention to Alaska, but for some reason I kept going to Alaska in my head while I was sleeping, and it was beautiful,” he said.

Stephan Mayer, director of neurocritical care at Mount Sinai Health System, who works regularly with coma patients, previously explained: report Medically induced comas are very different from trauma-induced comas.

‘What happens is you get glimpses of awareness. “It’s kind of like an old television with static electricity,” he explained.

‘There’s a lot of fuzzing until the picture turns on for a minute and then boom, it disappears again. What results is a collection of disconnected, disconnected flashes of awareness.’