Doctors deliver baby of brain-dead woman in Berlin

Doctors in Berlin successfully delivered the baby of a brain-dead woman whose life support machine was switched off 48 hours later.

Widower Dominik Lemke, 29, is now left to bring up newborn daughter Leonie-Franziska with his other children Elias, three, and Louis, two.

Mother Franziska Lemke, 25, threw a party for friends and family two weeks before her daughter was due, unaware of the tragedy that was about to befall her.

Last week she went into hospital in the German capital ready to give birth when she complained of head and neck pain.

The doctors diagnosed an infection with meningitis inflammation of the brain – a very rare complication which antibiotics failed to treat.

‘Franziska had a rapid deterioration, and after a quarter of an hour in the hospital she did not recognize me,’ says Dominik.

Only a few hours later it was clear: the doctors could do nothing more for Franziska and she was pronounced brain dead.

But machines kept Franziska alive because the doctors wanted to save the baby. 

‘On Friday my daughter came into the world by Cesarean section. We actually wanted to call her Leonie-Fabienne, but now she’s named after her mama Leonie-Franziska, ‘says Dominik.

‘The little girl is healthy. I kept her happy in my arms, but at the same time I cried for my wife, who could not share this moment with me.’

Forty eight hours after she was born Dominik gave doctors permission to switch off the machines keeping his wife alive.

He told Germany’s Bild newspaper: ‘I caressed her and told her I would always be there for the children, but I had to let her go.

‘We don’t know yet how to get back into everyday life. I explained to my children that ‘Mama is now an angel.’

Dominik has had to give up his training to become a locomotive driver ‘as I have to be both mother and father now.’ A fundraising campaign has been started to help support the family.