Mom Gives Birth to Three Premature Babies in 28 Months, All Survive

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 18, 2013   |   2:44PM   |   London, England

Cassana Rason has been called by her doctors a one-in-a-million mom because they know of no other mother who has done the same thing. What is Cassana’s special feat? She has given birth to three premature babies in the last 28 months and, despite the long odds, all of them survived.

The moving story helps focus on the fact that survival rates for premature babies are improving.

The children, Leo, Chase and Sienna-Lilly, have proven to be fighters for life. Her daughter Sienna-Lilly was given just a 10 percent chance of living. But she has, according to an article on the Rason family in The Mirror, a British newspaper.

“Having three survive against such odds is like winning the lottery,” says Cassana, 25, who suffers from PROM – Premature Rupture of Membranes.

She and IT worker husband Steven, 32, found out she was first pregnant in 2007. “We were both so excited,” says Cassana.

But her waters broke five weeks early and Leo was born by caesarean at 6lb 2oz.

Cassana says; “To be told your baby’s life is in the balance is indescribable.”

Leo was kept in an incubator. “He was so tiny. But what a battler! We took him home healthy.”

The couple thought lightning couldn’t strike twice when expecting their second in July 2008. But it did. At just 29 weeks Cassana’s waters broke and she had another C-section.

At 3lbs 6oz, Chase had to fight a collapsed lung and brain bleed for eight weeks before he too went home healthy.

Then came Cassana’s third pregnancy in 2009. She found herself going into premature labour at 23 weeks.

Cassana says: “We had hoped it might be third time lucky. How wrong we were.”
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reports that he outcomes with babies born in the 22-25 week range in terms of gestation are improving.

Fetal development information compiled by the Mayo Clinic acknowledges that, at 23 weeks’ gestation, “With intensive medical care, some babies born this week might be able to survive.”

Thus, even with the application of mechanical ventilation in an effort to save the live of the extremely premature baby, 79 percent of those born at 22 weeks will die before discharge from the Neonatal ICU.  But for the extremely premature baby at 23 weeks the corresponding number is 63% and at 24 weeks it is 41%.  Specialists in the treatment of premature and extremely small neonates cite the thumbnail that over the past 40 years the survivability  for these children has improved by approximately one week each decade.  It is not a fixed number.

LifeNews Photo Credit: The Mirror.