She
was 9 in long when she was born and weighed under 8 oz, about the
weight of a fizzy drink can or a mobile phone. She made her parents cry,
lying there all wrinkly, hooked up to the wires and the oxygen, dwarfed
by her incubator and less than half the size of her twin. But Rumaisa
Rahman, born 14 weeks early, battled for life and claimed her place in
the record books as the smallest baby known to survive. She and her
sister, Hiba, who weighed just 1lb 4oz at birth but is now a healthy
5lb, were delivered on September 19, 2004 by Caesarean section near
Chicago. Doctors took the agonizing decision to deliver them at just
twenty-five weeks and six days because their mother was suffering from
such high blood pressure that her life, and the life of the twins she
was carrying, were at risk. The gamble paid off. Rumaisa, broke a
15-year-old record set by a baby at the same hospital whose birth weight
was just under 10 oz.
