Miracle: Premature babies weighing just 475 gm and 617 gm among the smallest twins to survive in India!

Most doctors do not even attempt to save such babies, as the possibility of healthy survival is low.

By: Aishwarya Iyer | | Updated: June 6, 2018 4:19 pm

As Shobha Kunwar and Ganpat Singh realized that they were going to have ababy, they couldn’t be happier! However, the happiness turned to a nightmare when their twin baby boys , born weighing just 475 grams and 617 grams, fought for four months to survive a stormy course in the neonatal ICU of Jivanta Children’s Hospital, Udaipur. These ultra micro-preemies are among the smallest twins ever survived in India.

Married for 27 years, the couple conceived after IVF technique. ‘She experienced premature labour pain at 26 weeks of her pregnancy. As the survival of babies was getting compromised was taken up for emergency caesarean section,’ said Dr Sunil Janged, Chief Neonatologist at Jivanta Children’s Hospital.

Twin babies were born weighing just 475 grams and 617 gms at birth on 20th January 2018. These twins were barely larger than a human hand. They required artificial breathing support to regularize her breathing and then quickly transferred to Jivanta neonatal ICU. Read: 5 shocking facts about premature babies

‘Sheltered in a closed incubator and in the midst of tubes, circuits, central lines, probes, dressings, eye pads,etc. Babies were virtually invisible in the initial days,’ added Dr Janged who handled the case along with Dr Nikhilesh Nain, Dr Kapil Shrimali among others.

In the beginning, babies struggled to breathe so were put on ventilator and given surfactant to expand tiny immature lungs. Read: How to take care of your premature baby at home

‘Babies had infection in blood, heart functions and pumping was poor. Their gut was immature & could not be fed, so babies were put on TPN which means giving all essential nutrients such as protein, carbohydrate by blood. Regular screening of heart and brain were performed to rule out any bleeding in brain. Due to brain immaturity baby used to forget to breathe, we call it as apnea of pre-maturity. Babies required ventilatory support for 70 days and multiple blood transfusions.’

The kids were kept in the NICU for 126 days. ‘On discharge their weight was 1.7 Kg and 1.95 kg. By far their progress in NICU is satisfactory, Brain is structurally normal, eyes are developing normally. At the best of centres, only 10-20% of such babies born this weight. Most doctors do not even attempt to save such babies, as the possibility of healthy survival is low. It is the latest technology, high end expertise of our NICU team, which has pulled this off ” said Dr Janged.

Ganpat Singh said, ‘We are grateful for everything the team Jivanta did for our tiny twins. We had full faith on doctors and our babies have survived even with all troubles where chances of survival were very less.”

Dr Pradeep Suryawanshi [senior neonatologist from Pune] added, ‘This story highlights the fact that ultra micro preemie born in developing countries not only have a chance , but also the right to survive and live a normal life. Sophisticated neonatal care and teamwork could make that happen. Intact survival of such micro preemies may be a daunting task, but not impossible.’