A Baby Was Just Born to Mom Brain-Dead Since Feb.

When a pregnant woman was declared brain-dead after a brain hemorrhage in Portugal in February, the hospital determined her fetus to be alive and well and the father decided to try to keep his wife on life support long enough to allow for at least the possibility of the baby's survival. Now, nearly four months after the woman was declared brain-dead, obstetricians have delivered a healthy baby boy at 32 weeks, who weighs 5 pounds and 3 ounces, reports the Guardian. The birth, which required months of careful medical intervention, has been called "an extraordinary feat" by the head of the Portuguese Society of Obstetricians. Doctors have yet to reveal whether the mother is still on life support, per the BBC, but it's the longest a fetus has survived in the womb in Portugal to a mother declared brain-dead.

The feat isn't without precedent: In 2001, a woman in Kentucky gave birth to a healthy full-term daughter eight months after a car crash left her in a coma, and in 2015 a woman in the UK was in a coma for three months following a brain hemorrhage when she woke up to learn that her healthy baby daughter had been delivered six weeks prior. And earlier this year, a baby boy was born in Poland to a woman who'd been declared brain-dead of brain cancer 55 days earlier. He was born at 26 weeks, weighing just over two pounds, and his mother was taken off life support soon after. (More life support stories.)