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UK Mom Gives Birth 2 Days After Brain Dies

Docs kept ice skater's heart beating after hemorrhage

By Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 12, 2009 10:29 AM CST

(Newser) – A woman in the UK gave birth 2 days after dying of a brain hemorrhage, the Daily Mail reports. Jayne Soliman was declared brain dead a few hours after collapsing, just 25 weeks into her pregnancy, but the hospital kept her heart beating until her daughter could be delivered by caesarean section. The baby is doing “brilliantly,” a family friend said.

Soliman, a professional ice skater, was not aware of the tumor that caused her brain to hemorrhage. Doctors gave her steroids to help her daughter’s lungs develop; the baby weighed just over 2 pounds at birth. “She lived to have a baby girl—that was the one thing she wanted. This would have been the best day of her life,” the friend said.

[Images (1)]

[Quotes (3)]

Jayne Soliman is shown hugging her husband in this picture from her Facebook profile. (Facebook)

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She's absolutely tiny—her eyes are the size of lemon pips and her hands are about as big as my wedding ring—but she's doing brilliantly. - David Phillips, family friend, on baby Aya Jayne Soliman

It's just something you can't conceive—turning off your wife's life support machine and then going to see your newborn daughter. - David Phillips, family friend, on Soliman's husband

She was incredible. I think her heart hung on just long enough to see her new baby into the world. - David Phillips, family friend

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UK Mom Gives Birth 2 Days After Brain Dies