Mom of 2 Yawned So Hard, She Broke Her Neck—Seriously

You’ve heard of people breaking a leg, but have you ever heard of someone breaking their neck from a yawn? No? Well, settle in, because this story is a wild ride.

Meet Hayley Black, a 36-year-old mom of two from Milton Keynes. Back in 2016, she did something most of us do without a second thought: she yawned. But this wasn’t just any yawn. This was the yawn to end all yawns, a tectonic-plate-shifting, earth-shattering event that literally broke her neck. Seriously.

The whole bizarre incident started innocently enough. Hayley had just woken up to make a bottle for her newborn baby, Amelia. As parents know, the newborn phase is a blur of sleep deprivation and caffeine. So, when her daughter let out a little yawn, Hayley “instinctively” yawned also. That’s when things went horribly wrong.

She described feeling an “immediate electric shock sensation go through half my body.” The pain was so intense she knew something was dreadfully wrong and told her husband, Ian, to call an ambulance. You can just imagine that conversation. “Honey, I think I… yawned too hard?” Sounds like a bad sitcom plot, but for Hayley, it was the beginning of a nightmare.

Doctors Baffled as Symptoms Dismissed

When Hayley arrived at the hospital, the initial scans came back clean. Of course, they did. It’s the classic “we can’t find anything wrong with you, so you must be fine” scenario that so many people, especially women, face in emergency rooms. Her symptoms were dismissed, and she was sent home with painkillers, probably feeling like she was losing her mind. But the pain wasn’t just in her head; it was very real and getting worse.

It took another agonizing trip to the hospital and more detailed imaging to finally uncover the truth. The doctors, probably scratching their heads in disbelief, found that the sheer force of her yawn had caused her C6 and C7 vertebrae to shoot forward into her spinal cord. They called it “such a freak incident,” which is medical jargon for “we have no earthly idea how this happened.”

A 50/50 Chance of Survival

The diagnosis was grim. Hayley was rushed into emergency surgery—a discectomy and fusion—with surgeons giving her a 50/50 chance of survival. Even if she made it through, they gave her the same odds for ever walking again. Imagine going from a simple yawn to facing your own mortality and the possibility of permanent paralysis. It’s the kind of plot twist you’d expect from a video game, not real life.

Thankfully, the surgery was a success, but the recovery was brutal. Hayley spent the next six months in a wheelchair, painstakingly re-learning how to walk. As if that wasn’t enough, she was later diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic condition that causes widespread pain and fatigue. The experience left her with permanent nerve damage and a new, terrifying relationship with yawning. She told The Daily Mail that she now panics every time she feels a yawn coming on, unable to stifle it without it affecting her.

The Yawned Aftermath

The physical and emotional toll was just the beginning. The injury completely upended her family’s life. Her husband had to become her full-time carer, and the financial strain was immense. They lost their home and experienced homelessness, all because of one catastrophic yawn. It’s a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and how a single moment can have devastating, long-lasting consequences.

Years later, Hayley shared her story on TikTok, where it unsurprisingly went viral before being taken down for some reason. But the message remains: the human body is a weird, fragile, and sometimes ridiculously unpredictable machine. One minute you’re making a baby bottle, the next you’re a medical marvel. So, maybe the next time you feel a big yawn coming on, you might want to brace yourself. Or at least, don’t try to out-yawn a newborn.