HAMILTON, Ontario, October 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Hamilton area family is celebrating after being reunited this week with their youngest and smallest member, tiny Rachel, who was born four months ago by emergency C-section at 28.5 weeks gestation. She weighed just 330 grams (0.73 lbs.).
McMaster University Medical Centre is calling Rachel the smallest baby ever born in its hospital, and possibly the smallest infant ever born in Ontario.
“But right now, today, [we]'ve got a beautiful little baby who just wants to look at you and coo at you. Enjoy that,” said mom Ginger Blythin to CBC News.
Rachael – now a healthy 6 pounds, 12 ounces – joins her twin sister, Evelyn, who was born at the same time but weighed almost three pounds.
“Evelyn looked small, but you can't even appreciate what small is until you go across the room and see Rachel who's two pounds smaller,” said Blythin, recalling the day the girls were born in June. She remembers Rachael’s head looking no larger than a kiwi.
Rachel’s five-year-old brother and three-year-old sister are thrilled to be reunited as a family, mom says.
The twins were born just five weeks later than the cut-off period for late-term abortions at the Woman's Health Care Clinic in London, Ontario, an hour’s drive south of the hospital, which legally aborts babies at 23.6 weeks gestation.
The twins' story of survival can only be described as beating the odds.
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Doctors told the Blythins in April that their twin girls were in distress, diagnosing them with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Rachel was withering away from intrauterine growth restriction, which resulted in her mom’s nutrient-rich blood being passed off to her sister Evelyn.
Shortly after this, doctors separated the twins’ placenta using laser surgery. This seemed to help the girls, but an ultrasound in late May revealed that they were still in distress and not developing as they should be.
Doctors opted for an emergency C-section on June 3.
At 28.5 weeks gestation, Evelyn weighed 1,260 grams while Rachel was just 330 grams, equivalent to three quarters of a one-pound block of butter.
Peer reviewed research published in April in the Canadian Medical Association Journal discovered a steady rise in late-term abortions of babies who weigh more than Rachel at birth.