London, Jan. 13: A baby girl has been born two days after her mother collapsed and died from a brain haemorrhage.

Jayne Soliman, 41, was 25 weeks pregnant with her first child when she was declared clinically dead, but doctors kept her heart beating until they had delivered her daughter, Aya Jayne, by caesarean section.

After Aya Jayne was born, doctors put her on her mother’s shoulder so they could have a precious moment together before Soliman’s life support machine was turned off and her 2pound 1 ounce baby taken into intensive care, where she is said to be doing well.

Friends said Soliman, a former British ice skating champion, had been ecstatic when she fell pregnant and “wanted to be a mum more than anything else”.

Her close friend Lucine Phillips, 38, who was present at the birth last Friday, said: “Aya was born kicking and wriggling and it’s hard to describe the emotions I was going through when I saw her — it was a mixture of tragedy, elation and relief.

“A midwife picked Aya up and put her little face up to Jayne’s — if Jayne had been awake she would have had eye contact with her daughter.

“Everyone in the room was elated at the birth, but we also had to say goodbye to Jayne. Her husband Mahmoud said goodbye on his own because he wanted to be the last person to see her.

“He sat with her for a while and then he was told he could go and see his daughter.

“Mahmoud was allowed to touch Aya and seeing her tiny fingers close in on his was just indescribable. He knows he has to go on for Aya and that she will help him get up every morning.”

Soliman, of Bracknell, Berkshire, went to bed complaining of a headache last Wednesday, and collapsed shortly afterwards. She was airlifted to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford but was declared brain-dead at 8pm the same evening. Doctors discovered that Soliman had been suffering from an undiagnosed brain tumour which had caused a major blood vessel to burst.

Consultants told her husband there was a good chance they could save the baby’s life if they could keep Soliman’s heart beating, and she was given large doses of steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop before the caesarean section was carried out on Friday.

Soliman, who worked as an instructor at the Bracknell Ice Rink, was the British Free Skating champion in 1989 and the former world number seven in the sport.

David Phillips, 48, a fellow skater and close friend, said: “To Jayne, becoming a mother was the best thing in the world that could have happened to her.

“She was so happy, she had always wanted to be a mum more than anything else. She lived to have a baby girl — that was the one thing she wanted in her life. “