A healthy baby was born in the Czech Republic to a mother who had been brain-dead for nearly four months, doctors said Monday.
The baby girl was born by cesarean section in the 34th week of pregnancy last month, 117 days after her mother was declared brain dead, doctors at University Hospital in the second Czech city of Brno told a press conference.
The girl, weighing 2.13 kilos, is “one of the heaviest and most mature babies born to a brain-dead mother,” said Roman Gal, the hospital’s head anaesthesiologist.
The mother was declared brain dead after suffering a haemorrhage in April when she was 16 weeks pregnant.
Doctors kept her heart, lungs, kidneys and other organs working while monitoring the foetus.
Nurses “talked” to the foetus, while her grandmother read her fairytales and a therapist moved the mother’s legs to simulate walking, Gal added.
The mother’s life-support system was turned off after the birth.
The baby is being breastfed by her aunt, who also has a baby.
In a similar case in Portugal, a baby boy was born to a brain-dead mother in 2016.
