Born at 21 weeks, world's 'most premature' baby is now a healthy 3-year-old girl

At three weeks old in 2014, the baby is pictured here with Stensrud's and her husband's wedding rings on her arm/Photo credit: Courtney Stensrud 

Texas: A preterm baby born at just 21 weeks and four days gestation may be the most premature surviving baby ever reported, says a case report published in a medical journal last month.

The Texas girl, who is now 3, is now thriving and even attending preschool, says the report, adding she did not develop any auditory or visual impairments or cerebral palsy, reported the CNN. Read: US woman gives birth to baby girl from a donated embryo frozen for 24 years

“She may be the most premature known survivor to date,” according to a case report about her birth published in the journal Pediatrics.

Courtney Stensrud went into early labour after a medical emergency that resulted in the birth of her daughter, who weighed less than a pound, while still in the antepartum room at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.

Just after Stensrud gave birth to her baby, Dr Kaashif Ahmad, a MEDNAX-affiliated neonatologist at the hospital and lead author of the case report, quickly counselled her about the baby's extremely low chances of survival because infants born at this stage aren’t expected to survive outside the womb. However, her mother insisted that she be resuscitated. Read: Odisha conjoined twin girls Ganga-Jamuna pass away

“But when I was holding a live baby in my arms, I just absolutely thought she could survive. I felt it in my heart,” Stensrud said.

Ahmad and his colleagues were not expecting to resuscitate the preterm baby, he said. 

"But when the mother asked that we do everything for her daughter, despite having no reason to believe the baby would survive, I just made the decision to proceed with a vigorous resuscitation," Ahmad said.

Pointing out that Stensrud's daughter was one case and more research needs to be done on preterm births lower than 22 weeks, Ahmad said: “We have to be very cautious about generalizing one good outcome to a larger population.”

“It is very possible that there have been many 21-week babies resuscitated in other places that did not have positive outcomes, and for that reason, we haven't heard about them. We reported this case because after this resuscitation she did well, but it may be possible that this is just an extraordinary case and that we shouldn't expect the same from other babies. We have to learn more before we can make any conclusions,” he said.

According to the report, Stensrud went into early labour due to a premature rupture of membranes and a common infection of the placental membrane called chorioamnionitis.

The baby needed prolonged care in the neonatal intensive care unit, known as the NICU, and wasn't discharged from the hospital until 126 days after being born, the report added.

By 2 years old, Stensrud's daughter achieved scores that were average for a child around 20 months on Bayley III tests even though she was smaller in size than her peers, said the report.

The tests, intended to measure child development up to age 3, assessed her cognitive, motor and language abilities.

"For this little girl, we say that her fine motor was age equivalent to 20 months," Ahmad said.

"That is what we would expect the average 20-month baby to do," he said. "She was at that time 24 months, but as we noted in the case if you take into account how many weeks early she was, she was actually about 20 months, corrected."

According to the World Health Organisation, worldwide, an estimated 15 million babies are born too early - before 37 weeks gestation - every year. Full-term babies are born at 39 through 40 weeks.

The girl, who was lying on her stomach still attached by the umbilical cord at the time of birth, has finally come home three days before her original due date in November 2014.

“In her school, she is keeping up with all the other 3-year-olds. She loves playing with other kids. She loves everything I think a normal 3-year-old likes. She loves her baby dolls, she loves books, and she loves make-believe. She loves anything and everything her (older) brother is doing,” said Stensrud, who now hopes her baby girl's case will inspire the world.