For the nurses working in any neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), taking care of tiny, premature babies is their daily routine. But for the team at Children’s Minnesota, they set a record caring for one of the tiniest babies, who is now going home on his first birthday.
Hawa Mohamed had always dreamed of being a mother. When she found she was pregnant with not one, but five babies, she counted her blessings. However, the path ahead wasn’t exactly simple and easy.
Although most multiples arrive early for a variety of reasons, Mohamed’s quintuplets were born on March 24, 2024, at just over 23 weeks’ gestation. The odds that all five of the siblings would survive were around just 10%.
The tiniest baby, Bilal, weighed just eight ounces – about the size of a small apple. This was one that was definitely for the record books, said Dr. Thomas George, Director of Neonatology of Children’s Minnesota.
“Eight ounces would make Bilal the second smallest baby in the world described in the tiniest babies registry,” Dr. George said, according to WCCO. Being a baby that tiny comes at risks for all kinds of things, such as brain bleeds, inflammation of the intestines, sepsis, and more, according to the Cleveland Clinic. But Bilal has done well and is the last of his siblings to go home, just in time for his first birthday.
“The kids overcame extraordinary odds,” said Dr. George.
Though many micro-preemies are at risk for developmental delays and disorders such as cerebral palsy, all five siblings are expected to have a normal development, Children’s Minnesota reported.
“I didn’t think he was going to make it,” Mohamed said of Bilal. “We were living by the hour, and by the grace of God, he is here.”
“Caring for such a tiny baby is incredibly challenging. Bilal and his siblings required the full range of expert care we provide at The Mother Baby Center, from the maternal-fetal specialists at Allina Health to the neonatal expertise at Children’s Minnesota,” said Dr. George. “It took a team of hundreds of neonatal experts to get Bilal and his siblings to this point. Our team is thrilled for Bilal to finally be going home to join his brothers and sisters!”
As Live Action News has reported, in February of 2019, a baby born in Tokyo weighing in at less than 10 ounces was considered to be the smallest surviving baby at the time. In May of the same year, baby Saybie went home following a NICU stay after being born at 8.6 ounces. In June of 2020, baby Kwek Yu Xuan was born in Singapore weighing 7.5 ounces; she went home the following year.
These tiny, precious babies are testament to advances in medical science, leaps and bounds from when a law clerk arbitrarily set the unscientific “age of viability” at 28 to 24 weeks, and bear witness to how the outlook for the tiniest babies improves when their humanity is respected and they are given a chance.
None of the magnitude of her many blessings is lost on Mohamed. Speaking through a translator, she gave thanks for her children doing well, and for her tiniest son to finally be at home with her, as she bounced the chubby baby on her knee.
“All praise to God,” she said. “I’m very happy today because my children and I are healthy and going home.”
And she’ll never forget how Children’s Minnesota cared for her babies in their hour of need: “All the staff here helped me a lot. They were there for me and helped me raise my children.”
