Baby delivered from brain-damaged mother is OK, goes home

A baby girl delivered prematurely by cesarean section from a brain-damaged mother and then treated in a hospital for months has been discharged in good condition, a doctor in Poland said Thursday.

Ewa Gulczynska, head of the neonatology ward at a mother and child clinic in Lodz, in central Poland, said the infant was delivered in February weighing 850 grams (1 pound, 14 ounces) after the pregnancy of the unresponsive woman had been sustained for three months to give the baby a chance to survive.

Gulczynska said the baby was discharged May 10 weighing 3,420 grams (7 pounds, 8 ounces) and was home with her father and grandmother. She will be under doctors' supervision, but her prognosis is good.

Upon delivery, the baby had to be put into intensive care and was on a mechanical respirator for nine days to treat her severe respiratory failure, Gulczynska told The Associated Press.

The baby's father, Robert Kasiura, said on TVN24 that he was "mega-happy that Nikola survived."

"We are waiting now for Wiola," the baby's mother, he added.

Doctors have also been treating the 24-year-old mother who suffered a head injury in an October car crash. She remains hospitalized and her prospects are not clear.

The chief obstetrician at the Polish Mother's Memorial Hospital Research Institute, Krzysztof Szaflik, told TVN24 it was a real challenge to properly treat the mother so as not to harm the pregnancy.

"We can talk in terms of a miracle" here, given the many threats to the pregnancy, Szaflik said.

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