Baby born after 107 days inside his dead mum hooked up to ventilator

When the doctor declared: “Baby Lourenco has been born and he has cried,” cheers erupted from the nurses who had spent the past 107 days caring for the unborn tot. Tears rolled down the cheeks of the exhausted medics who declared him a miracle baby. But their joy was tinged with sadness as the birth also meant they’d be saying a final farewell to the youngster’s mother, who lay lifeless in the room – brain dead and hooked up to a ventilator that would now be switched off.
Sandra Pedro, 37, was a “living ¬incubator” hooked up to monitors in Lisbon, Portugal. for almost four months. She had tubes to feed her, keep her breathing and give her essential hormones. While the doctors painstakingly analysed the medical needs, the nurses made sure they took care of the baby’s emotional ones. They cuddled the belly, massaged it, whispered Lourenco’s name into it and even sang him songs and nursery rhymes. Nurse Nuno Camilo, 37, said: “He liked the singing best, that’s when he moved the most. She was in a room on her own so we sang songs from our own childhood.”

Fighting back tears, he went on: “We would cuddle the tummy to feel the baby moving and stimulate him.
“Sometimes we played classical music and sometimes pop. It gave us all pleasure to sing to the baby.”
And Mr Camilo explains: “Most of our patients who are brain dead don’t absorb artificial nutrition that we give them.
“But as time went on a general feeling started to grow in us that a miracle was happening. Life was happening.
“Her breasts started to grow, her belly got bigger. It was the first sign of something extraordinary happening.”
And then something extraordinary did happen when Lourenco was born.
Mr Gomes said: “We were all elated and all crying. We talked a lot about it and we said she’d given her life to the baby – literally. He was getting her soul.
“Something strange was going on and it was different from anything we’d ever seen before. It was a miracle.”
Even Dr Susana Alfonso, 40, who delivered the baby, agreed it was a “miracle”.
She added: “It was a surprise because she was dead and normally when the mother dies the baby dies also.
“The nurses provided the love the mother could not. They were the first to tell us the baby was still moving in the morning. Of course it was like our baby.”
Sandra had arrived in Dr Alfonso’s ICU at 17 weeks pregnant on February 20 with a throbbing headache. Just hours later she was pronounced dead. Doctors thought the baby was dead too until tests proved otherwise.
Dr Alfonso said: “It was something that shocked us a lot. We knew that she was pregnant but then we realised the baby was alive when she was not. It was a big shock.
“We did not know what to do so we asked the hospital board. They made a commission of doctors to decide whether to carry on with the pregnancy or not.
"It was very rapid when they decided that the best thing to do was to carry on with life.”
Obstetric doctors decided that a caesarean would be performed at 32 weeks – if Lourenco made it.
“In the beginning it wasn’t visible but it was growing, growing, growing all the time . It was difficult to watch,” recalled Dr Alfonso. After an anxious wait, on June 7, he was born weighing 5lb 2oz.
His factory worker dad Miguel Angelo Salvador, 30, and both sets of grand¬parents now have their own nickname for the newborn – “Our warrior”.
Lourenco is stable and off a ventilator after being moved to a maternity ward. He has started on donated breast milk and staff say he is a “quiet baby”. Miguel, who had been with Sandra for a year, said his birth will change his life. Talking about the moment he heard his son cry for the first time, he added: “This baby is going to give meaning to my life.”
Sandra’s life support machine was switched off immediately after Lourenco’s birth and she was buried the next day.
boy needs all their help.”
Dr Virginia Beckett, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said cases where a pregnant woman has died due to brain injury but have been kept on life support until her baby is ready to be born are rare. But as long as the tot receives blood supply via the placenta, with normal levels of oxygen and nutrients, development should continue as normal.