World’s smallest baby who weighed as much as an apple at birth is finally discharged from hospital after 13 months

‘In my 22 years of being a nurse, I haven’t seen such a small newborn baby’

File image: A baby born weighing almost as much as an apple is believed to be the tiniest to survive (Getty Images)

The world’s tiniest premature baby, with the birth weight of almost as much as an apple, has finally been discharged from the hospital in a much healthier condition after more than a year.

At the time of her birth on 9 June 2020 at Singapore’s National University Hospital (NUH), Kwek Yu Xuan weighed just 212g and was only 24cm long, according to the Strait Times. She was born at the sixth month of pregnancy, however, her weight was even less than what the doctors expected.

She is believed to be the world’s tiniest baby to survive, a record held by a baby girl in the US who weighed 245g at birth in 2018, according to the University of Iowa’s Tiniest Babies Registry.

Yu Xuan’s survival journey, however, wasn’t easy. She had to remain in the hospital for 13 months for treatment and depend on a ventilator to breathe because her organs weren’t fully functional. But when she was discharged, she weighed a healthy 6.3 kg, the newspaper reported.

“In my 22 years of being a nurse, I haven’t seen such a small newborn baby,” Ms Zhang Suhe, an advanced practice nurse at the department of neonatology at NUH, told the Strait Times. “I was shocked so I spoke to the professor (in the same department) and asked if he could believe it.“

The 13-month-long stay at the hospital also makes Yu Xuan the longest-staying baby at NUH.

Yu Xuan’s mother gave birth to her by an emergency C-section three months early due to a condition called pre-eclampsia that could have risked the baby’s life.

“I didn’t expect to give birth so quickly, and we were very sad that Yu Xuan was born so small,” Wong Mei Ling, mother Yu Xuan told the Strait Times. “But due to my condition, we didn’t have a choice. We could just hope that she would continue to grow (and be healthy).”

“She was so small that even the calculation for the medication had to be down to the decimal points,” she added.

The baby girl had a “limited chance of survival,” according to Singapore’s National University Hospital (NUH) where she was born.

“Against the odds, with health complications present at birth, she has inspired people around her with her perseverance and growth, which makes her an extraordinary ‘Covid-19’ baby - a ray of hope amid turmoil,” the hospital said in a statement.