Results from Michele’s neurological tests are ‘about as high as any baby gets.’ : Child Born to Brain-Dead Mother

Doctors here on Wednesday delivered a healthy, 4-pound, 5-ounce girl from the womb of her brain-dead mother, who was disconnected from life-support systems following the birth and died shortly afterward.

It was a day of both celebration and mourning for Derrick Poole of Oakland, who held his daughter, Michele Odette Poole, for the first time and said goodby to his fiancee, Marie Odette Henderson.

Henderson, 34, never regained consciousness after surgery June 4 for a brain tumor and was proclaimed legally brain dead three days later.

Her parents, Otis and Edna Henderson, wanted to disconnect life-support systems then, but Poole obtained an 11th-hour restraining order naming him the legal guardian of the unborn child. In an out-of-court settlement, the parents agreed to allow Poole to be the guardian, and Henderson was kept on life-support systems for 7 1/2 weeks to allow the fetus to develop.

‘Carbon Copy’

“She’s a carbon copy of Odette,” Poole said of his newborn daughter.

Poole, a 31-year-old toxic waste technician, said he is still grieving for Henderson but that the birth was an emotional high that made things a little better.

Doctors elected to perform the delivery by Caesarean section on Wednesday, after tests showed that the fetus’s lungs were adequately developed. The Caesarean section went without complication and Michele breathed and cried without assistance, doctors said.

Michele is in “excellent condition,” said Dr. Stephen Fernbach, the baby’s pediatrician and director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center’s neonatal intensive-care unit here.

Results from the newborn’s neurological tests were “about as high as any baby gets,” Fernbach said. Doctors originally hoped to wait until 34 weeks gestation to remove the baby, but Fernbach said the fetus matured sooner than doctors anticipated and was delivered at 32 1/2 weeks, nearly two months premature.

Fernbach concluded that the baby’s neurological status was normal by the way she made eye contact, her vigor and her interaction with the environment. Because the mother’s bodily functions had to be mechanically maintained, there was a risk of lack of oxygen to the fetus and possible brain damage, the doctor said.

“As far as we’re (doctors) concerned, she is normal,” Fernbach said.

The Henderson-Poole case is one of about only five documented cases in which a brain-dead mother has been kept alive to facilitate the growth of a fetus and eventual delivery of the baby, said Dr. Donald Dyson, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Kaiser.

Fernbach attributed the success of the birth to Dyson and his staff’s continuous monitoring of the mother and baby.

Dyson explained that because the mother was immobile, it was important to move the fetus occasionally so it did not become accustomed to a static environment. Nurses also played music for external stimulation, so that the fetus was not hearing beeps from the monitoring equipment constantly, Dyson said, adding that the music was “a whole range, from classical to rock.”

When the baby leaves the hospital in seven to 10 days, she will live with Poole’s sister, Ivory Hatton, in Richmond, Calif. Hatton, 36, has three daughters of her own but said that because she is the only one of Poole’s four sisters who does not work, she is best able to help raise the child.

When Hatton held her niece for the first time Wednesday, she said she felt a chill.

Child an Extension

“She is truly an extension of her mother,” Hatton said.

Hatton said that she is proud of her brother for fighting to keep his child but that the waiting and worrying has taken a great toll on him.

“Derrick, within the last couple of months, has aged a few years,” she said.

Poole said he will offer visitation rights to Henderson’s parents, despite his strained relationship with them.

“I try not to hold a grudge,” he said.

Before the brain tumor caused Henderson to collapse at work one day, she and Poole had been living together and were planning to wed.