Child Born to Brain-Dead Mother Brings Joy to Her Dad

L.A. Times Archives

Aug. 16, 1987 12 AM PT

Associated Press

OAKLAND — When Michele Poole was born a year ago, her comatose mother was brain-dead and her father had gone to court to get doctors to keep the woman, his fiancee, on life-support and ensure the child’s birth.

Today Michele is a healthy, talkative and teething toddler with a proud father who has no doubt that he made the right choice.

“For a while, I looked away as I held her,” said Derrick Poole, 32. “Now I’m just grateful that a part of Odette is alive.

“She’s a talker. Her mother was a talker,” he said. “She’s got her mother’s eyes. She’s very responsive.”

Marie Odette Henderson, suffering from a brain tumor, lapsed into a coma June 4, 1986, when she was six months pregnant with the baby she and Poole had discussed having.

Although the couple had not yet married and Poole had no legal rights over the fetus, he went to court and won an order stopping doctors at Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara from pulling the plug on the life-support system keeping Henderson alive and assuring the baby critical time to grow. Poole was also given parental status.

Henderson’s parents opposed the order.

Michele was born July 30 by Caesarean section 7 1/2 weeks premature and 53 days after her mother was declared brain-dead. The baby weighed just 4 pounds, 5 ounces, but has had no health problems, Poole said.

“This baby was something that me and Odette both wanted. We talked about it many times,” Poole said. “Her (Odette’s) last words to me were, ‘Take care of Baby.’ That’s what I am doing. I made the right choice.”

For six months after the baby’s birth, she stayed with Poole’s sister, Ivory Jean Hatton, in Richmond.

“My sister was great with Michele, and I appreciate all that she did for us,” he said. “But me and Michele were meant to be together, and I just couldn’t stand being without her.”

Becoming a father in such an unconventional way has made Poole “much more of a man than I ever thought I’d be,” he said.

Poole switched from a job with a toxic waste transport company in Richmond to being a salesman-driver for a South San Francisco meat company.

He admits to being overprotective of his daughter: “I don’t like strangers to touch her, and I panic a little when she falls and takes a bump.

“She is spoiled rotten by me. They tell me every day at day care that I must not let her suck her thumb. I tell them she can suck her thumb any time she wants, and I’ll pay the dental bills.”

Poole dreams of Michele’s growing up to be a ballet dancer like her mother, but will not stand in her way should she have other ideas.

They have moved into a comfortable home with a yard in the Oakland hills, sharing it with his fiancee’s friend, Michele Germany, and her 2-year-old son.

“It was just that we were always there for each other,” said Germany, Michele’s namesake. “It didn’t leave much time for us to see anybody else.

“At first, I felt I had to help take care of Odette’s daughter. Now I feel it’s not for Odette anymore; it’s for myself.”