A baby girl who was born weighing just 580 gm five months ago has made a miraculous recovery and was handed over to her parents in a joyful ceremony at Nagapattinam General Hospital on Friday.
S Latha (20) could not believe her eyes when nurses brought the infant to her in the labour ward of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the hospital on May 10. The baby was all skin and bones and weighed just 580 gm, believed to be among the lightest babies ever born in India. It was her second child after her first pregnancy was aborted spontaneously a year ago.
“Not many gave my daughter a chance of survival. I was scared as I lost my first child before she could be delivered. I had some hope my second child ould make it. I never left the hospital. Today, nothing can describe my happiness that she survived and she will live healthily,” said Latha, wife of Selvamani, a fisherman from Samanathampettai, a village near Nagapattinam.
The child was not registered in the birth register for a few days as it was considered an expelled foetus delivered within the abortion period of 24 weeks.
Doctors called the infant second-lightest child born in Tamil Nadu and third-lightest in India. Medical staff did not give her daughter much of a chance to survive, Latha said. The child was born on May 10 as a premature baby who was in her mother’s womb for just under 23 weeks, instead of being delivered after
nine months from the womb. Doctors and nurses treated her for the remaining 20 weeks in the hospital.
The nurse called the child ‘Shivanya’ and doctors called her ‘Jhansi Rani’. The girl’s parents are likely to rename her.
Shivanya’s journey to good health has been termed a rare case by the medical community.
"The baby did not have the pulmonary surfactant, which is a fluid mixture of lipids and proteins in the alveoli of the lungs and which is required to breathe properly.
So, she was given bovine surfactant therapy. Her stomach was decompressed using the nasogastric tube and bovine surfactant, extracted from bovines, was fed through an endogastric tube," said Dr KR Jayakumar, Chief Paediatrician. Nagapattinam General Hospital, who, along with three other paediatricians attended the child.
Shivanya was then put on a ventilator for two weeks, and then on a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine for another two weeks. Shivanya was then fed with Latha’s milk. However, Shivanya did not develop the ability to suckle.
"Seven of us were taking care of the child as our own and treated her as special. So, we pumped the mother’s milk and gave it to Shivanya using a gastric tube for two weeks. Slowly and steadily, she gained weight and now weighs 2.2 kg," said N Maruvarasi, a nurse.