Teen asks for her triplets after waking from a coma; doctors say they ‘never existed’

When she woke from a coma, the first thing she did was ask for her three daughters. The medical staff was stunned. But their response shattered her entire world. Just like that, the children she had nursed, watched grow, and deeply cared for over seven years were gone. Why? Because they never existed!

Living a lifetime in her mind

Clélia Verdier, 19, from Lyon, France, ‘made a serious suicide attempt by taking a large amount of medication’ in June 2025, the woman told the Daily Mail. She was placed into a medically induced coma for three weeks. And what followed was a dream of a lifetime, quite literally.

Verdier was, obviously, not aware that she was in a coma. Instead, she slipped into a dream, and a lifetime unfolded before her eyes. Talking to the outlet, the teenager recalled having ‘extremely intense’ dreams and nightmares. She was ‘not aware that she was in a coma’ at the time, so those dreams ‘became her reality’.

The dream that really stuck with her was that of becoming a mother. It felt so real. She felt the physical and emotional pain throughout the hallucination.

‘I could feel so many things. When I dreamed about giving birth, I felt the stress. I also felt a lot of pain. In this dream, I gave birth to triplets, whom I named Mila, Miles, and Maïlée. Maïlée died shortly after birth. I felt so awful – overwhelmed with sadness and guilt,’ she recalled.

She even remembers the first ‘skin-to-skin contact’ that she had with her babies. ‘It was incredible. I felt an overwhelming wave of love,’ she added.

In her dream, she lived for seven years and watched her daughters grow up. Each had their own personalities. One was ‘quite shy’, and the other was a ‘bundle of energy’.

‘I remember walks, meals we shared, and bedtime stories,’ she added. She ‘loved them with all her heart’.

The crushing reality

When Verdier finally woke up from a coma, she was told the children never existed. ‘That’s when they told me they didn’t exist. It was a shock. I was so convinced it was real that the first time I saw my parents again, I told them they were grandparents,’ she said.

She really struggled to come to terms with the fact that she was never a mother. Even after a year, she finds it hard to accept.

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

The teenager hopes to have real children one day. ‘They will have a different place in my heart, but one just as important,’ she said.