A baby thought to be the world’s smallest at birth has been discharged from a Singapore hospital after 13 months of intensive treatment.
The baby, Kwek Yu Xuan received 13 months of intensive treatment at the hospital, spending weeks on a ventilator, and now weighs a much healthier 6.3 kg. Doctors say her health and development progressed well under their care and she is now well enough to be discharged.
A statement from the hospital read:
“Against the odds, with health complications present at birth, she has inspired people around her with her perseverance and growth, which makes her an extraordinary ‘Covid-19’ baby – a ray of hope amid turmoil”.
Even though Yu Xuan is being discharged, she still has chronic lung disease and will need help with her breathing at home. However, NUH doctors say she is expected to get better with time.
More so, Yu Xuan’s parents have been trained to use medical equipment so her care can continue at home after her hospital discharge.
Her mother, Wong Mei Ling, told local media that Yu Xuan’s birth and size came as a shock because her first child, a four-year-old boy, was delivered at term.
Yu Xuan’s parents were able to pay for her long hospital stay through a crowdfunding campaign that raised 270,601 dollars.
Details of Yu Xan’s birth
According to reports, Kwek Yu Xuan was just 212g (7.47oz), equaled the weight of an apple, when she was born and measured 24cm long. She was delivered at just under 25 weeks which is far short of the average 40 weeks.
The previous record-holder is a girl in the US who weighed 245g at birth in 2018, according to the University of Iowa’s Tiniest Babies Registry.
Yu Xuan’s mother gave birth to her by emergency C-section four months early after she was diagnosed with a dangerously high blood pressure that can damage vital organs and be fatal for both mother and baby, pre-eclampsia.
When Kwek Yu Xuan was out of her mother’s womb and was wheeled into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the nurse on duty could not believe her eyes.
“I was shocked! So, I spoke to the professor in my department and asked if he could believe it. In my 22 years of being a nurse, I haven’t seen such a small newborn baby”.
The baby girl had a “limited chance of survival”, according to Singapore’s National University Hospital (NUH) where she was born.
Doctors involved in her delivery spoke to reporters and noted that Kwek Yu Xuan weighed even less at the time of birth than they expected her to. Dr. Ng, who is a senior consultant at the department of neonatology at NUH said: “We expected her to weigh 400, 500 or 600 grams, but she came up to just 212 grams,”.
During her time in hospital, Yu Xuan was given multiple kinds of treatment and relied on different kinds of machines to survive.
Treating the premature baby offered another set of challenges as doctors disclosed that her skin was so fragile that they could not put probes on her. Her body was so small that they had to look for the smallest breathing tube and her caretakers had to cut diapers so they could fit her.
“She was so small that even the calculation for the medication had to be down to the decimal points”.
Read also: Polygamist Musa Mseleku slams proposal of polyandry in South Africa
