{"id":191773,"date":"2018-11-29T09:05:34","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T15:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=191773"},"modified":"2018-12-04T14:52:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T20:52:40","slug":"21-weeks-premature-baby-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/21-weeks-premature-baby-survive\/","title":{"rendered":"Born at 21 weeks, this preschooler is the most premature baby to survive"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Most pregnant mothers don’t meet their babies until they’ve reached 40 weeks gestation. But sometimes, babies come early. Prematurity can be dangerous, and sometimes babies don’t survive being born too early, or they may experience other repercussions of extreme prematurity. But medical advancements have given more and more of these premature babies the ability to not only live, but to thrive — and one baby in San Antonio, Texas, is being called the youngest ever to survive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Courtney Stensrud and her husband were thrilled to be expecting a little girl, but her membranes\u00a0ruptured early<\/a> at just 21 weeks of pregnancy. So Stensrud began searching for stories of other babies who had survived that young, that might give her hope. \u201cThere were stories of 22-weekers, 23-weekers, but nothing about 21-weekers. So I knew that there was little to no survival or viability at 21 weeks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Lyla was born on July 11, 2014. “You don’t expect you’re the one that is going to be delivering a baby at 21 weeks, because your baby is supposed to be there until 40 weeks,” Dr. Kaashif Ahmad, who delivered Lyla, said.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0These 4 \u2018micro-preemies\u2019 show that every life deserves a chance<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“The sack the baby was in was going down the birth canal,” Stensrud explained. “So that is not supposed to happen. Your water is just supposed to break.”<\/p>\n

Originally, Dr. Ahmad thought there was nothing that could be done for Stensrud’s baby. \u201cAlthough I was listening to him, I just felt something inside of me say, \u2018Just have hope and have faith,'” said Stensrud. “It didn\u2019t matter to me that she was 21 weeks and 4 days. I didn\u2019t care. As he was talking to me, I just said, \u2018Will you try?\u2019 And he said he would, and [four] years later, we have our little miracle baby.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Ahmad agreed. “We put that super tiny tube down and it fit,” he said. “If it had not fit, we wouldn’t have been able to resuscitate her. But she was just big enough.” He then moved forward with “vigorous resuscitation”. \u201c[W]e placed her under an overhead warmer, we listened, and we heard her heart rate, which we were not necessarily expecting,\u201d he said. \u201cWe immediately placed a breathing tube in her airway. We started giving her oxygen, and really pretty quickly, her heart rate began to rise. She very slowly changed colors from blue to pink, and she actually began to move and began to start breathing within a few minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stensrud previously had not shared pictures of micro-preemie Lyla, who is now four years old, or shared her name — until now.<\/p>\n