Baby born on plane
An Indian woman gave birth to a healthy boy aboard a jet airliner while flying to Australia to reunite with her husband.
Judith Hamel, one of four doctors who helped deliver the six-pound baby aboard the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to the southern city of Adelaide, described the delivery as smooth.
“I think we all had fun once we knew it was all safe,” Hamel told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio Wednesday.
The flight was diverted to the northern city of Darwin where the 29-year-old mother, Paramjit Kaur, from Punjab state in northwest India, and the baby were admitted to the Royal Darwin Hospital within two hours of the birth, a hospital spokeswoman said on customary condition of anonymity. (news)
Depressed mother kills baby
A woman suffering post-natal depression suffocated her four-week-old baby with a pillow and then told her husband what she had done, a Perth court has been told.
Rebecca Doreen Morley, 39, was today granted conditional bail after police had opposed the application in Perth Magistrates Court.
Ms Morley is charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on the four-week-old boy, who was pronounced dead soon after being found in the family’s inner-city Leederville home on June 11.
While the charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, the court was told it may yet be replaced with a charge of infanticide which carries a maximum seven-year jail term.
Dressed in a black top and pants, Ms Morley sat impassively throughout the half-hour bail application. (news)
Jamie Lynn Spears gives birth
Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl Thursday morning at a south Mississippi hospital, according to a friend of the Spears family.
The friend, who asked not to be identified because the family had not yet announced the baby’s birth, told The Associated Press that the baby was named Maddie Briann and weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces.
The 17-year-old Jamie Lynn was the star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101,” a sitcom about prep school friends, and is the younger sister of pop star Britney Spears. The Spears family announced in December that Jamie Lynn was pregnant. The father is Casey Aldridge, a pipe-layer from Liberty, Miss. The couple is not married but announced an engagement several months ago.
Ellen Brannan, spokeswoman for Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, in McComb, would not give out any details. “We understand everybody’s interested, but we don’t give out information on anyone. Everyone’s entitled to their privacy,” she said. (news)
Jessica Alba gives birth to baby girl
Jessica Alba, who married her long-time boyfriend Cash Warren three weeks ago, has given birth to baby girl, according to US Weekly magazine.
Alba, 27, best-known for her roles in the TV drama “Dark Angel” and the movie “Fantastic Four,” announced last December that she was pregnant and engaged to Warren.
Alba met Warren, 29, on the set of “Fantastic Four” in 2004 where he was a director’s assistant. Warren has since moved into producing.
US Weekly said Alba gave birth to her daughter at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles over the weekend. (news)
Miracle baby grew outside of womb
An Australian doctor on Friday hailed as a “miracle” a baby girl who survived a full-term pregnancy outside the womb.
Durga Thangarajah was delivered by caesarean section at Darwin Private Hospital on Thursday, after spending almost nine months growing inside her mother’s right ovary — stretching the organ’s tissue as thin as paper.
Obstetrician Andrew Miller said the chances of a foetus lodging in an ovary were one in 40,000 but that the chances of such a pregnancy producing a healthy baby were almost nil.
Asked whether the birth was miracle, Miller said: “Oh yes.”
“It’s an extraordinarily unusual outcome and I am not aware of anyone who has seen a (full) term ovarian pregnancy as we have here,” he told AFP. (news)
