Mother gives birth two days after she collapsed and 'died'

Published on Tuesday 13 January 2009 01:00

AN ICE-SKATING coach gave birth two days after she collapsed and died, it emerged yesterday.

Jayne Soliman, 41, was declared brain dead but doctors managed to keep her heart beating long enough to deliver her daughter, Aya Jayne, by caesarean section.

Mrs Soliman, a professional skater, was 25 weeks pregnant when she collapsed in her bedroom, having gone to bed complaining of a headache.

Just hours earlier she had been on the ice at the Bracknell Skating Club where she worked as a coach.

She was airlifted to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital but was pronounced dead at 8pm on Wednesday. Doctors said the skater had suffered from a haemorrhage caused by an aggressive tumour, but were still hopeful her baby could be saved.

Mrs Soliman's heart was kept pumping on a life-support machine and she was given large doses of steroids to help the child's lungs develop.

Within 48 hours, doctors delivered the baby, weighing two pounds one and a half ounces.

Babies born at 25 weeks have a 67 per cent prospect of survival, according to statistics from Bliss, the charity for newborns.

Aya, whose name is a word from the Koran meaning miracle, was placed on her mother's shoulder before being handed to her father, 29-year-old Mahmoud Soliman.

"It was Jayne's one true wish to be a mum – and she would have been a great mum," Mr Soliman, a law graduate, reportedly said.

The couple, of Bracknell, Berkshire, married in May 2007 but were devastated when Mrs Soliman suffered a miscarriage.

Recalling the delight at the second pregnancy, Mr Soliman said: "I can remember the first scan. We just hugged each other and kept crying when we saw the heartbeat. It was this tiny speck beating. We were so looking forward to the baby coming."

Mrs Soliman, formerly Jayne Campbell, was British Free Skating champion in 1989 and was rated seventh in the world the same year. She then became a figure-skating teacher and worked in Abu Dhabi where she met her Egyptian-born husband. She converted to Islam before their wedding.

David Phillips, a friend who was with her when she died, said: "To Jayne, becoming a mother was the best thing in the world that could have happened to her."

Members of her skating club expressed their "immense sadness" and "great regret" for what happened but said Mrs Soliman's daughter was "doing well".

Writing on the National Ice Skating Association's website, Lesley Brenikov, chairwoman of Bracknell Ice Skating Club, described Mrs Soliman as a "longstanding, popular and well-known coach".

Edna Boden, the club secretary, said: "It is such terrible news and a sad loss to the skating community. She was a long-standing and very popular member of the club.

"She took part in all the shows. We are absolutely devastated. But it's such good news about her daughter."

A statement on the club's website read: "It is with great regret and immense sadness that we have to inform you that coach Jayne Soliman died suddenly on Wednesday afternoon as a result of a brain haemorrhage."

The statement continued: "The baby is very small but doing well. Our prayers are with her."

Aya Jayne, who has been transferred to the intensive care unit at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, is being closely monitored by doctors.

Mrs Soliman's funeral took place at the weekend at the Jamia Masjid mosque in Reading.

Although extremely rare, there have been previous cases of babies kept alive in the womb of a dead mother. In 1999, a boy was born at Cabuenes hospital in Gijon, northern Spain, on New Year's Eve to a mother who had been clinically dead since mid-November.