From death comes life

A brain-dead woman kept alive artificially for more than two months gave birth to a premature baby girl, doctors at a Milan hospital said.

A few hours after the Saturday birth, the machinery artificially keeping the 38-year-old woman alive was shut off, doctors at Milan's Niguard hospital said.

The baby girl, born two months early, was breathing on her own Sunday, doctors said.

The baby, named Cristina after her mother, was born by emergency caesarean section and weighed just over 1.5 pounds, doctors said. The woman's last name was not released to protect the family's privacy.

Doctors decided to deliver the baby after the woman's blood pressure plunged and the fetus experienced heart rhythm problems, the hospital said.

The woman was hospitalized in March after suffering the rupture of a cerebral aneurysm, and she was soon declared brain dead, the hospital said. She spent 78 days in a brain-dead state, it said.

The mother's kidneys and corneas were donated for transplant, the hospital said. Her liver was donated to another patient at Niguarda hospital, news reports said.