Parenting, while ultimately a fulfilling and joy-filled experience, has its fair share of stressful moments. Yet the anxiety of
bringing up children and keeping them from danger isn't just relegated to when they're walking around of their own volition.
Pregnancy itself can be an anxiety-driven experience as you worry about the health of the mother and her child.
As you can imagine, even the slightest hiccup along the way would be enough for any parents to freak out over all the things that could possibly go wrong. That goes for some bad bedside manner from the doctor or some problems that most pregnant women go through, so when things actually go south it would be an intensely stressful experience for everyone involved.
This was the case for 48-year-old mother Seeta, when she was rushed to the hospital to give birth prematurely. Once she arrived, doctors had to take immediate action as her blood pressure had risen to dangerously high levels, endangering the mother and her baby. They gave her an emergency C-section and managed to deliver the baby, but she was incredibly small and unlikely to survive in her current state.
The baby girl, Manushi, was born 12 weeks premature following the complications her mother went through, and weighed just 400 grams. With her foot the same size as her father's thumbnail, she ended up being one of the smallest babies to ever survive. Dr. Sunil Janged, the chief neonatologist at the hospital, said:
"When the baby was born, we were uncertain of what could happen. She was struggling to breathe, so was immediately put on advanced respiratory support ventilator to expand her tiny, immature lungs. She could not be fed adequately due to immaturity of her gut."
At the time of Manushi's birth, at only 28 weeks, she was only 8.6 inches long. She was barely able to breathe with underdeveloped organs, but made it through and was eventually discharged. Her parents are ecstatic now that she has beaten the odds and survived, calling the experience a miracle. "She's just fought and fought against all the odds, but she's made it," the 50-year-old Giriraj said.
Manushi, who was born on June 15 in a hospital in India, is now functioning perfectly, with her brain and other organs developing normally. After seven weeks in the hospital, she was able to take milk, and eventually reached a weight of 5.2 lbs. Then, after six months in the hospital, she was discharged. The treatment should have cost one million rupees ($15,730), but thankfully the doctors charged the family a nominal fee due to their low income.
It's incredible that a newborn baby that only weighed 14 ounces at the time of birth managed to recover to be a healthy child. It goes without saying that the family in question felt an overwhelming wave of relief once they received the good news, and are ecstatic to be raising a child despite the complications and stress they faced at the beginning.
