India’s tiniest baby weighing 400g miraculously survives
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Pune: A baby weighing lighter than a pack of milk survives fighting all odds on the way, The Times of India reported.
Baby Shivanya is reported to be India’s tiniest baby to come up smiling against the survival rate of 0.5% among her kind.
Shivanya’s success story might sound one-off compared to the normal 2,500 grams of weight that babies require following 37-40 weeks of gestation.
Shivanya was born at 24 weeks (six months) but seven months of care made her gaining normal growth.
"She is just like any other healthy newborn now. Sheweighs 4.5 kilograms and has good food intake, “her father, an IT professional in Wakad, was quoted as saying.
Experts attribute Shivanya’s miraculous survival to the efforts of doctors and India’s evolving newborn care.
Once blamed for increased child mortality, India has come a long way since saving “extremely preterm babies born at the lowest pregnancy period”.
There are reports of several instances in the nation where medical care brought back preterm babies from the brink.
The most notable of them in the past include a baby in Ahmedabad surviving at 22 weeks of pregnancy with a birth weight of 492 grams.
Another child in Hyderabad, born at 25 weeks of pregnancy, weighing just 375 grams, eventually made it, according to the report.
But Shivanya, according to Dr Sachin Shah, chief neonatologist of Surya Mother and Child Hospital, who treated her, was a case apart from other babies being the tiniest.
‘There has been no recorded case of such an extremely preterm survival in India before’, Shah reportedly said.
After 94 days of intensive care, Shivanya who was born on May 21, 2022, through vaginal delivery, went home weighing a reassuring 2,130 grams.
Her mother’s congenital condition called double uterus (bicornuate) is the reason by Shivanay suffered the premature birth.
Double uterus (bicornuate) is when a woman has two separate pouches in the womb with one of them being smaller than the other.
Shivanya grew in the smaller one that made her to get into the world in just 24 weeks.
