A baby born at just 16 months broke a new world record: He was born 132 days earlier than he should have, now stronger than ever and is now the oldest surviving baby.
Generally speaking, it takes about nine months for a human to form. This may sound like a long time, but it’s actually surprisingly short. If babies were born at the same developmental stage as baby chimpanzees, for example, it would take a year and a half or more of gestation to reach this point.
However, about one in ten births in the US is considered a preterm birth, meaning it occurs before 37 weeks of pregnancy. When a baby is born premature one day, it probably won’t be too much of a problem. But when the pregnancy ends weeks or even months before the due date, the chances of everything going well quickly dwindle. For example, a baby born at 32 weeks has a 95 percent chance of survival. In 24 weeks, it decreases below 50 percent.
So when twins Curtis and C’Asya Means were born at just 21 weeks and a day, doctors didn’t have much hope.
Working as a physician at the University of Alabama (UAB) at Birmingham for Curtis and her mother, Michelle Butler. “We usually recommend compassionate care in such extreme preterm situations,” said Brian Sims. “This allows parents to cuddle their babies and enjoy the little time they can spend together.”
Unfortunately for one of the twins, the outcome was tragic: C’Asya died when she was just one day old. But Curtis survived. And now, at just sixteen months old, he has officially become the world record holder.
An announcement from Guinness World Records states, “Curtis, or ‘Poodie’ as his family called him, celebrated his first birthday on July 5, 2021.” At this point, it also set a new record as the earliest surviving baby.
Curtis weighed just 420 grams when he was born – that’s less than one-eighth the weight of an average newborn. He needed round-the-clock care in a specialist neonatal intensive care unit: bottled oxygen, therapists to help him use his mouth, and personalized medicines to help him thrive. . .
Sims told GWR, “It showed initially that he was responding to oxygen, his heart rate increased, his numbers increased . . . he wanted to survive,” and continued: “I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years . . I’ve never seen her be strong. Curtis is a special baby.”
It took 275 days for Curtis to be ready to be discharged, about as long as a full-term pregnancy. Taking him home after a long stay in the hospital “was a moment I will always remember,” Butler said in an interview with NPR. Although he still needs a feeding tube and supplemental oxygen, his doctors say he is in good health.
Curtis beat previous record holder Richard Hutchinson of Wisconsin by just one day, but at this early stage of pregnancy that makes a huge difference. The Guinness record had not been broken for 34 years before Hutchinson.
Assistant professor in the Department of Neonatology of UAB, Dr. On the other hand, Colm Travers told GWR, “We felt privileged to be able to take care of him and his mother on the way home.”
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