'Baby born blue with no heart rate or muscle tone'

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EUGENE, Ore. -- Margarita Sheikh keeps photos of her son Shahzad close by.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of him, obviously," Sheikh said.

Sheikh said when she hired Darby Partner to be her midwife, she knew Partner was not a licensed midwife.

"The thing that bugs me is that she presented herself as having all this knowledge and information. And being fully comfortable in delivery and everything," Sheikh said. "She just failed me."

Sheikh said Partner worked with an aid, Laura Tanner, for her birth.

Her labor lasted 8 days, and by the 7th night, Sheikh said she screamed to go to the hospital.

The midwives didn't take her.

Sheikh said her cell phone was taken so she couldn't call for help, and friends that came to check on her were turned away.

Finally, according to the midwife's notes that Sheikh shared with KVAL News, at 2:45 p.m. on July 24, 2011, "birth, baby born blue with no heart rate or muscle tone."

"Once I pushed him all the way out, I did reach back to grab him, and he was just completely limp," said Sheikh.

Sheikh said it took five minutes for Partner or Tanner to call 911. She said there weren't any medical tools or oxygen tank in the birthing room. Ambulances eventually arrived, and Sheikh learned at the hospital her son was dead.

"I did not even realize that it was such a, like, I was in danger at all, that I was putting my son in danger," said Sheikh.

Since KVAL News last spoke with Sheikh, the Lane County Medical Examiner's Office completed an autopsy report for baby Shahzad. The report found Shahzad had no abnormalities. The doctor called the death "intrauterine fetal demise during home birth"; basically, a still birth.

After KVAL News first aired Sheikh's story in August, many viewers wondered why Sheikh hired an unlicensed midwife to begin with.

"I went into it thinking she was fully confident, that she knew what she was doing," she said.

Viewers also asked why Sheikh didn't do more to save Shahzad.

"When you're in labor like that, you're not freaking thinking clearly," she said. "I don't know, I had never been in labor before, I trusted these women. I thought they had the best outcome for me and the baby at heart."

Sheikh said she is pushing for lawmakers to require mandatory licenses for midwives, and for more information to be available to families when they want to hire a midwife.

Despite the trauma of the death of her son, Sheikh said she still wants to be a mom.

"I do want to get pregnant again, not to replace Shahzad, I could never replace him. But just because I'm 32 years old, I really want to be a mom," she said.

KVAL News spoke with the lead midwife, Darby Partner, and the assistant, Laura Tanner. They both declined to comment for this story.