A BRITISH woman who had a stroke days before she was due to have a baby gave birth to her son while still paralyzed.

    Nurse Kate Weaver was out shopping when she realized she was having a stroke.

    She managed to tell her husband: “We need to go to hospital. It’s not the baby, I’m really ill,” moments before losing her ability to speak and move.

    Doctors managed to stabilize her, but the family was faced with an agonizing choice of whether to undergo a life-saving procedure which posed risks for both mother and baby.

    The procedure, called thrombolysis, involves the administration of a clot-busting drug.

    It had never been performed on a pregnant woman at the hospital — and there was a risk of Weaver and her baby suffering a brain haemorrhage.

    However, the family decided to go ahead.

    Weaver recovered her speech within four hours but remained almost totally paralyzed down her left side.

    Then just three days later with the help of an epidural, her son Toby was born weighing 3.03kg. Such was the scale of Weaver’s stroke, in September last year, that she had to learn to walk again.

    Toby was allowed to go home at a week old and his mother joined him at the family home in Wem, Shropshire, a week later where she began the long road to recovery. (SD-Agencies)