Emily Rose Hollins arrived home from the hospital on Friday for the first time since her premature birth five months ago.
Emily is one of the smallest babies to survive outside the womb. She was born four months prematurely, weighing just 12 ounces, KOCO News 5 reports. She is the tiniest baby ever to survive at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
“Just knowing what she’s gone through and where she is today, … that’s a miracle,” her mother, Melanie Hollins, said.
Emily’s life is a miracle for more than one reason.
Before Melanie Hollins knew she was pregnant, she said she was diagnosed with stage four kidney failure. She was undergoing tests and hoping to get on an organ transplant list when she found out that she was pregnant with Emily — something she did not think was possible.
Under such circumstances, some women may have chosen abortion, but Melanie chose life for little Emily.When Emily arrived four months early, Melanie thought her tiny daughter might die. Doctors warned her that Emily had just a slim chance of surviving. But Melanie said the nurses encouraged her so much as they cared for her baby girl.
“That helped me to give everything I have to her,” Melanie said.
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LifeNews has documented quite a few cases of babies surviving after being born weighing less than 1 pound. Last fall, a Chicago hospital saved a very premature infant who was born weighing 13 ounces. Eirianna spent four months at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago before growing well enough to go home in February of this year.
More micro-preemies like Eirianna and Emily are surviving outside the womb thanks to modern medical technology.
A Duke University study published in January found babies born at just 23 weeks gestation are surviving outside the womb at a greater rate than ever before. Researchers examined 4,500 babies between 2000 and 2011 and found a “small but significant drop in fatalities for babies born between 23 and 37 weeks gestation,” as well as a decrease in premature babies manifesting with neurophysiological problems, the Daily Mail reported.
Research published in 2015 in the New England Journal of Medicine also found that 23 percent of premature infants are surviving birth as early as 22 weeks. The study also found that some hospitals are not giving babies treatment at this early age, despite talk about pushing back the standard viability line from 24 weeks to 23.
