Dead women who have delivered babies

Dec 21, 2019

If you are one of the Thomases who doubt miraculous occurrences around the birth of Jesus, wait until you hear this one. Twenty women have so far delivered babies after being pronounced dead.

CHRISTMAS   SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

Child delivery miracles did not stop with Christmas Day

Christianity says Jesus was born of a virgin mother. The supernormal phenomenon implies that Mary was able to conceive, deliver and remain virgin.

Lots of other miracles around child delivery have happened. Hilary Bainemigisha discusses the baffling life after death occurrences, where dead women have gone on to give birth to live children.

If you are one of the Thomases who doubt miraculous occurrences around the birth of Jesus, wait until you hear this one. Twenty women have so far delivered babies after being pronounced dead.

In Uganda and many other countries, a person is declared legally dead when the brain stops working. Brain death is where a person loses all brain function, including involuntary activity necessary to sustain life.

The most recent case is on August 15 in the Czech Republic. A woman, who was declared brain-dead, had spent 16 additional weeks on artificial life support machine in the Brno University Hospital before doctors performed a C-section to deliver her baby girl.

While this was the 20th woman reported to have delivered a baby after death, she was the first to have been kept on a life support machine for such a long period of time in order to deliver a baby.

For a woman to deliver a baby, 117 days after being declared dead, was a medical breakthrough, which astonished the international community.

According to information from the hospital, a 27-year-old pregnant woman was admitted into the emergency section due to a stroke on April 21, 2019. She was declared brain-dead shortly after arrival.

However, the hospital decided to save her 16-week old pregnancy.

The Rescue Team, composed of doctors, nurses, obstetricians and anesthesiologists, drew a life support plan until her baby developed into a state that could survive on its own.

After the delivery, the doctors disconnected the life support systems in the presence of her husband and other family members.

Prof. Roman Gálof, the head of the case, said they almost lost the baby four times. "I think it is a very interesting case due to the longevity of the patient's brain-dead condition and the successful ending of pregnancy after 34 weeks. The newborn girl was 2.13kg and 42cm," he said.



            Left to right: Susan Toress and Catarina Sequeira. Photo/Courtesy


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This case clearly belongs among the impossible circumstances and slightly above the Christmas virgin birth in rank. Yet it does not compete with the Japanese miracle, where a dead woman was made to deliver vaginally.

The Japanese pulled off what is, perhaps, the biggest of all life-after death miracles in 2014.

The 32-year-old woman attempted to commit suicide and was admitted in a deep coma, but stable circulation. But on her 13th day in the hospital, she passed on due to cardiac arrest.

Her foetus of 20 weeks was sustained inside her until the 92nd hospital day at week 33 and three days.

Doctors succeeded in inducing the still body with strong hormonal inducement and a healthy girl was delivered vaginally with assistance.

She was later discharged 40 days after birth. The mother was switched off life support a year later.

Doctors concluded that while brain death remains a hopeless condition for a patient, a pregnant woman in such a condition may still have the ability to give birth naturally to a healthy baby after intensive life support.

This was the first and only report of vaginal delivery from a brain-dead mother.

AMERICAN MIRACLE

Another case that was widely reported about was of an American woman, who delivered a baby girl while brain-dead on August 3, 2005.

The 26-year-old researcher, Susan Torres, had suffered a stroke on May 7, 2005, and was taken to the Virginia Hospital Centre, where it was determined that cancer had spread to her brain.

She was 14 weeks pregnant when she passed on in that same month of May. Her husband, Jason, asked that she be maintained on life support in order to save the baby.

He carried out an emotional fund-raising for the mounting medical bills and raised more than $600,000 (current sh2.2b) from around the world.

The miracle baby was delivered on August 2, 2005, weighing 800g, almost three months after her mum had died.

She was named Susan Ann Catherine Torres. The mother was removed from life support on August 3. However, Baby Torres soon suffered from an intestinal disorder that required surgery.

But on September 11, 2005, she died shortly after surgery for a perforated intestine. She was five weeks and five days old. The family donated the balance of the money they had raised to cancer research.

The medical literature contains at least 20 cases of dead women whose lives were prolonged for the benefit of the developing foetus.

According to the University of Connecticut in the US, the first-ever attempt was in 1979. Thus, whether it is God, science or fate, just know that miracles do happen.

What the others think is impossible, can become an achievement, innovation, a technological breakthrough or a divine intervention.

PORTUGAL'S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Last year, Christmas in Portugal was overshadowed by a December 26 baby, born to a dead woman, an international sports icon, Catarina Sequeira.

She was a canoeist who had represented her country many times. The 26-year-old woman suffered an acute asthma attack at her home.

Her condition deteriorated and within days, she was announced dead on November 1.

She was 19 weeks pregnant. The hospital agreed to put her on life support to enable her baby to survive in her womb until the right time to be delivered.

Doctors said the intention was to wait for 32 weeks' gestation when the preterm would have a very high probability of survival, but the foetus' respiratory condition deteriorated and a caesarean section was brought forward to December 26.

The baby, who was delivered 56 days after her mother's death, was named Salvador. She weighed 1.7kg and remained under hospital care for the next three weeks.

Under Portugal's law of presumed consent, a hospital is allowed to harvest any organ that is needed, unless the patient opted out of organ donation before death.

That helped because the woman was left on life support as a matter, of course.

The head of the hospital's ethics committee, Filipe Almeida, explained: "Being a donor is not just about being in the position to donate a liver or heart or lung, but also being in a position to give yourself up so a child can live."

Almeida said the baby's father, Bruno and the rest of the family really wanted the child to be born.

Sequeira's mother, Maria de Fátima Branco, said at least her daughter had left her a replacement. This was the second such case in Portugal.

In 2016, another baby, Lourenço, was born in Lisbon after surviving 15 weeks in his dead mother's womb.

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