There's a new world's smallest surviving baby. She weighed 8.6 ounces at birth
The world's smallest baby was born at 23 weeks and 3 days gestation and weighing just 8.6 ounces in 2018. For reference, that's about a little more than how much a typical hamster weighs.
The micro preemie was called baby Seybie by her caretakers at San Diego's Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns.
Baby Seybie was born at least 16 weeks early in December 2018 and spent almost five months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. She had to be delivered early because the mother, who remains anonymous, had preeclampsia.
According to the Mayo Clinic, preeclampsia is when a pregnant women gets high blood pressure and results in pregnancy complications and damage to other organs.
It's pretty incredible that baby Seybie is thriving. A 2015 report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that premature babies born at 23 weeks had a survival rate of 33%.
She was able to go home a healthy baby in mid-May and currently weighs more than 5 pounds.
Although the family is hiding their identities to protect their privacy, there is a video documenting Seybie's journey.
"It was the scariest day of my life. I just felt very uncomfortable and I thought maybe this was part of the pregnancy." Seybie's mother says in the beginning of the video.
"They told my husband he had about an hour with her and then she was going to pass away, but that hour turned into two hours, which turned into a day, which turned into a week," the mom says.
Emma Wiest, a registered nurse at the hospital, said that she was surprised because Seybie was about half the weight of a regular 23 week old preemie.
"I feel blessed," the mom says. "She is the smallest baby, but she's mine."
Warning: the video below contains sensitive imagery.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: There's a new world's smallest surviving baby. She weighed 8.6 ounces at birth
