Woman gives birth two days after dying

OXFORD, England, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- Doctors in Oxford, England, say they kept a woman's body alive for two days after her death to allow her to give birth.

The Daily Mail said Monday despite the fact professional ice skater Jayne Soliman was declared brain dead last week, doctors were able to keep her body alive long enough to deliver her unborn child via Cesarean section.

David Phillips, a fellow skater and friend of Soliman's, said Soliman was deemed legally dead last Wednesday after suffering a brain hemorrhage caused by a tumor.

The 41-year-old woman had been 25 weeks pregnant at the time, so doctors used large doses of steroids to speed up the unborn child's lung development.

Phillips said within 48 hours of Soliman's official death, she became the proud mother of a nearly 2 pound, 2 ounce girl.

"She lived to have a baby girl -- that was the one thing she wanted in her life," Phillips told the Mail of last Friday's birth.

"This would have been the best day of her life," he added later.