The size of a mobile phone: Kimberley Mueller weighed just over 10 ounces when she was born in Hanover, Germany - making her the world’s smallest surviving baby
Posted on 09/28/2007 3:29:14 PM PDT by cpforlife.org
The world’s tiniest baby - meet the 10oz bundle of defiance
When she was born, 15 weeks premature and weighing ten and a half ounces, her father’s confidence was about the only thing on Kimberly Mueller’s side.
In the few snatched moments he was allowed before his daughter was whisked away by doctors, Andreas Mueller spoke from his heart.
“I whispered to her: ‘Kimberly, you’ll make it,’” he recalled.
The size of a mobile phone: Kimberley Mueller weighed just over 10 ounces when she was born in Hanover, Germany - making her the world’s smallest surviving baby
With a survival chance of less than 1,000 to one, every day she has got through since then is a triumph.
Six months later, Kimberly has finally been allowed to go home to her parents in Hanover.
“Babies as small as this usually have no chance,” said Dr Oliver Moeller, a heart specialist who treated her.
“We are incredibly lucky that she lived. Such a case I have never experienced. We had a lot of luck ... a lot.”
Kimberly is the smallest baby ever born in Germany and the youngest to survive.
She was just 10.2 inches long and weighed little more than a packet of butter when she arrived in the 25th week of her mother’s pregnancy.
Now six months, Kimberley has been allowed home for the first time (Above with mother Petra and father Andreas)
Petra Mueller, 38, who remained at her daughter’s bedside in intensive care at the University Clinic in Goettingen, was allowed only to stroke her with her finger.
“It was the nicest thing when she would grip my finger in her tiny hands,” she recalled.
“She was like a little bear gripping a tree trunk, just hanging on for life as if she was saying ‘Don’t leave me, mummy’.”
Kimberly was placed in an incubator for warmth, given a respirator to help her breathe and fed through a drip. She was also given a cocktail of drugs to boost an immune system that was barely formed.
At three months, she faced a major setback, when doctors feared she could be blind. But laser treatment corrected the problem.
Kimberley’s chances of living were rated at worse than 1,000-1 when she was born 15 weeks prematurely
Kimberly’s progress was underlined when she arrived home this week weighing five and a half pounds and measuring 17 inches.
During the coming weeks she will continue to be fed artificially and will need to have oxygen as her lungs keep developing.
The world’s smallest known surviving baby was Rumaisa Rahman who weighed just 8.6 ounces when she was born in Chicago in 2004.
Depends how you define “preemie”. Most of these super-preemies end up severely disabled and never start real first grade (and in some cases not even a special ed first grade). Bigger preemies are usually physically small throughout their lives, but otherwise fine or with just mild physical impairments or learning disabilities. It’s amazing that this little girl is even alive, but she may not ever be a candidate for first grade, unfortunately. The fact that’s she almost 3 months past what should have been her birth date, and still can’t breathe unaided or swallow, suggests that she’s far from out of the woods physically. She does look quite alert though, which bodes well for her mental development.
“Her due date will always be her real ‘birth’ date”
Can you please explain that further. Is there some medical/technical reason?
From my layman’s perspective she was born 15 weeks prematurely or 15 weeks before her due date.
Petronski hits the point with a resounding thud!
HAHA!! Isn’t it funny how the preemies turn out to be the big guys when they grow up! My 9 1/2 pounder is 24 and is only 5’7” and weighs about 145 lbs! We thought he’d grow up to be a good-sized football player some day! How about yours, B-Chan?
I think the poster means that you look for the usual milestones of infant development based on a premature baby’s original due date, rather than his actual birth date. For babies up to six or eight weeks premature, this tends to even out by two, or even earlier.
As others have mentioned, extremely premature babies such as Kimberly are more unpredictable in their eventual development, and are more likely to have permanent problems. However, many have done far beyond what was predicted at birth!
Thanks for the ping.
It seems like the age of viability is shrinking. What is the definition? Something like, less than 30% of babies born at this age survive after the first postnatal week?
I think our current laws should reflect the shrinking age of viability and the medical reality that these are living beings with rights.
Open the yellow pages, and you’ll see abortions performed up to 24 weeks. This kid was one week older than that.
I’m pretty sure abortions are performed well after 24 weeks.
p.s. great tagline.
“That 17 pound Siberian baby craps ten ounces”
ROFLOL, that one made me laugh out loud. :0)
Oh yes, of course you’re right. But it’s harder to get later-term abortions. My point is that many still think there’s some restriction on abortion, that only first-term abortions are allowed. But you can find a place right in the yellow pages that would have aborted this child a week before her live (and successful) birth.
That’s where I was going with that.
What’s fascinating to me is the shape of the kid’s hands in the third picture. Are the fingers lacking the last knuckle? Also, look at the thumb. It appears long compared to the fingers.
Very interesting. Since the baby sitting on the mother’s lap appears to have normal hands, I am assuming at 5 months, the baby’s hands are not yet fully formed. Yet they were able to keep the baby alive even so. Some day they will be keeping them alive before they even have limbs I suspect. Then what will the abortionists have to say?
My daughter was 5lbs-15ozs and She seemed so tiny to me, I was afraid too, to put her down. God Bless the parents and the baby./Just Asking - seoul62.......
How could anyone look at those pictures and question whether or not God exists?
May God continue to bless that little one.
mrs
I was born two and a half months early, and weighed three pounds. That was back in 1970.
I could read at the age of three.
And I started kindergarten at the age of four.
I don’t think that there are really any hard and fast rules about how long it takes to “catch up.” My parents say there was never any “catching up” for me to do and that I was always ahead of my peers.
I was always TINY, though. And that has more to do with genetics than any difficulties with being born premature.
The pediatricians never put me on a special chart to gauge my development when compared to other babies.
This baby became a science experiment.
You sure know how to get these old eyes washed out, brother. ... When I see these babies, so small, so premature, it always reminds me that they build their bodies of flesh and bone and organs for survival in the air world, just like they build their own placenta and umbilicus for survival in the water world of the womb. Thanks be to God this beautiful little miracle is thriving! Thanks for touching this old heart, Kevin. I needed that ping.
Baby Chan was delivered at exactly 40 weeks. He weighed 550 kg (10 pounds, 13 ounces) at birth. Now, at six months, he’s twenty pounds of pure luv, and growing like Topsy (she “’jes grew”). He’s a giant baby, and we love him all to pieces.
A twenty-five week baby is perfect in every aspect. Hands and feet are totally normal. There just is not very much subcutaneous tissue, so bones and skin can make the thumb look long and skinny.
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