- Husband: We said goodbye to the “most wonderful woman”
- Their newborn baby is “doing well” and learning to breathe, he says
- A fund for the family has raised more than $ 150,000
- “The message of positivity has been incredible,” the husband says
(CNN) — A ventilator kept Robyn Benson breathing for weeks so the baby growing inside her could survive.
Doctors delivered the brain-dead Canadian woman’s son on Saturday. She died the next day.
“On Sunday, we had to unfortunately say goodbye to the strongest and most wonderful woman I have ever met,” her husband, Dylan Benson, wrote on his website.
Their newborn son, Iver, is in a neonatal intensive care unit in Victoria, British Columbia, a hospital spokeswoman said. He could be hospitalized for eight more weeks, Dylan Benson told CNN on Tuesday.
“He’s doing well, still learning to breathe and all those things. … But he’s the cutest little man,” he said.
The Benson family’s ordeal began shortly after Christmas.
Robyn Benson complained of a “terrible, terrible headache” and sent her husband out to get some Tylenol. When he returned, she was unresponsive, but still breathing.
At the hospital, doctors discovered she suffered a brain hemorrhage. She was later declared brain-dead.
The situation left Dylan Benson in an unimaginable position, counting down the days until the birth of his son — and the death of his wife.
The case drew some comparisons to the case of Marlise Muñoz in Texas, another pregnant woman who was declared brain-dead and hooked up to machines that kept her heart and lungs working. But there were two key differences.
In Muñoz’s case, her husband wanted her taken off a ventilator, and the hospital acknowledged the fetus she carried was not viable. A court ultimately ordered the hospital to disconnect the ventilator.
In Benson’s situation, family members and doctors agreed to keep her on a ventilator until they could deliver the baby via a cesarean section. And the life inside her was growing normally.
On Tuesday, Dylan Benson told CNN he was grateful for the support he’d received
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