A baby has been born in Hungary after a very rare circumstance in which his brain-dead mother was kept alive for three months so he could be born.As LifeNews has previously reported, in a case out of the United States from 2005, this kind of situation has occurred previously but is far from common.
In this case, a baby boy was delivered via Cesarian section to a mother who was declared brain dead in October.
The 36-year-old woman from Milan suffered a massive brain haemorrhage in October, during her 23rd week of pregnancy.
After being taken to hospital, she was pronounced clinically dead and there were fears for her unborn child. But doctors at San Raffaele hospital in Milan managed to keep her on life support, feeding the developing foetus through a tube inserted in the mother’s stomach.
Against all the odds, the baby boy was born on Thursday by Caesarean operation, in the woman’s 32nd week of pregnancy.
Doctors had wanted to reach at least the 28th week of pregnancy to ensure the baby had the best chance of survival. A normal pregnancy lasts between 38 and 40 weeks. Hospital staff said the baby, who weighed 1.8kg, was in good health.
The case is not totally unique and another one like it occurred in Hungary in 2013.
On life support for nearly three months in order to facilitate the birth of her child, Susan Torres, in August 2005, gave birth to a baby girl. Susan Anne Catherine Torres was born by Caesarean section two months premature and weighed just one pound and 13 ounces and measured 13.5 inches long.
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Torres, a researcher at the American National Institutes of Health, collapsed on May 7 and was rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed with stage four melanoma (cancer) and was declared brain dead, with no hope of recovery.
Hospital physicians discovered the melanoma, treated nine years earlier, had recurred metastasized to her brain. The tumor then hemorrhaged, causing brain death.
A mother of a two year-old son, Torres was 17 weeks pregnant at the time of her collapse. Doctors told her husband, Jason, that there was no hope of survival for his wife, but that they could possibly prevent their baby from dying if she was kept alive.
Justin and Susan’s parents agreed doctors should do everything possible to save the couple’s child.
