Premature Babies

All babies are small and ridiculously cute, but some are smaller than others. Modern medicine is helping even the tiniest babies survive, so we thought we’d explore the story of one of the absolute smallest…

On the 19^th of September 2004, the world’s tiniest baby was born. Weighing an incredible 8.6 ounces and measuring just 9.5 inches long (!) Rumaisa Rahman was born along with her twin, Hiba, at Loyola University Medical Centre in Chicago. Hiba was a bit bigger than her twin, weighing 319 grams more.

Their parents, Mahajabeen Shaik (aged 23) and Mohammed Abdul Rahman (aged 32) were both originally from in Hyderabad, India and conceived the twins naturally. They were delivered by caesarean section a month early as their mother Mahajabeen had developed severe pre-eclampsia, a disorder usually characterised by dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy. Both Rumaisa and her sister were put on ventilators for a couple weeks and fed through intravenous therapy until they were able to have breast milk through feeding tubes. After around ten weeks, Rumaisa and Hiba were able to begin feeding from bottles and were given laser eye surgery. It’s perhaps not a surprise that premmies tend to be born with eyesight problems, poor little mites!

Rumaisa made her first public appearance three months after her birth. She was introduced to society by Dr. William MacMilliam and Dr. Jonathan Muraskas at Loyola University Medical Centre, who had waited until the twins were both healthy enough to leave hospital.

At the age of five, Rumaisa still weighed much less than 90% of children her age at 33 pounds and just 3 ½ feet tall. Both Rumaisa and sister Hiba are, we are happy to tell you, completely healthy, with no reported  learning or behavioural problems. Doctors have suggested the girls may be smaller than the average adult, but it’s hard to say how tall any child will grow. Hopefully, scientific improvements will continue to help save many more premmie babies in the future.

Image: http://bit.ly/1uGYAsY