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Medical miracle! 21-year-old brain-dead mother gives birth to twins after 123 days of being on ventilator - Read
Her last words to him were, `I want you to be prepared to accept this, because I will be staying there. I won`t be coming home.`
New Delhi: When miracles have to happen, they do and bring a blessing even in devastation. A 21-year-old pregnant mother who was nine weeks pregnant, was declared brain dead by doctors after she complained of immense head and neck pain.
Turns out, she had burst a vein in her brain, causing a cerebral haemorrhage. Frankielen da Silva Zampoli Padilha passed out while her husband Muriel Padilha (24) was rushing her to the hospital.
Her last words to him were, “I want you to be prepared to accept this, because I will be staying there. I won't be coming home.”
Doctors immediately put her on ventilator and offered no hope for the twin babies she was carrying in her womb.
They said that they would remove her from the ventilator once the babies' hearts stopped beating, since she was heavily sedated and pumped with strong antibiotics, which were ultimately going into the babies as well.
Much to the doctors' surprise, the babies' heartbeats were still going strong three days after their mother was put on ventilator. That's when it was decided that they would keep Frankielen alive till it was time for the babies to arrive.
The doctors patiently watched them grow normally inside Frankielen's womb and even sang and talked to her bump every single day to replicate a mother's love.
123 days later – seven months into the pregnancy – Frankielen and Muriel's twins were born. The doctors performed a miracle C-section to bring Ana Vittoria and her brother Asaph safely into the world.
The newborns were kept in incubators for three months thereafter, to avoid the risk of infection, build up their strength, help them gain weight and to wean them off the medication administered to their mum during their gestation.
As per the Mirror UK, the unique case involved many complications stabilised only through the continuous intervention of medications to prevent the young mum's body from shutting down.
It was an emotional moment for not just the family members, but the entire staff at the hospital as well, when the babies were born.
After the ventilator was switched off in February, her heart and kidneys were donated to save the lives of two others.
Muriel and Frankielen also have another daughter, Isa Beatriz, who is two-years-old.