A Californian girl born the size of a Coke can continues to beat the odds, months after doctors predicted she wouldn’t make it.
About 7,000 babies are born every year at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, but Ellyannah Lopez may be the smallest they’ve ever seen.
She weighed only 350 grams at birth and was so fragile that her parents could not hold her.
“She was born so small that no one, not a single doctor in that operating room, thought she would cry. And when she did, I could hear everyone saying, ‘Is that her?'” Cecia Juarez, 36, said ABC7.
Now seven months old, the girl has grown to 12 pounds.
Seven-month-old Ellyannah Lopez weighed less than a pound at birth and was the size of a soda can
The Californian girl was born before the 26th week of pregnancy and was so fragile that her parents could not hold her
Cecia Juarez and Boris Lopez struggled to conceive for eight years and were considering fertility treatment when Juarez learned she was pregnant
Parents Cecia and Boris are from Gardena, a city in the South Bay of Los Angeles.
The couple struggled to conceive for almost a decade and just as they were about to seek fertility treatment, Juarez became pregnant.
“No drugs were needed, so we knew our baby would be nothing short of a miracle, right?” she said.
But her blood pressure began to fluctuate and at 20 weeks Ellyannah was no longer receiving food through her umbilical cord.
Doctors feared that continuing the pregnancy would be fatal for both and performed an emergency caesarean section.
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai is equipped to provide specialty care for even the most at-risk premature infants. Yet Ellyannah was the first baby to use a high-frequency jet fan.
Despite the doctors’ round-the-clock care, she almost died several times in her first month of life.
But after twenty weeks, Ellyanna could no longer get proper nutrition through her umbilical cord and doctors ordered Juarez to undergo an emergency caesarean section.
The couple spent Thanksgiving in the hospital with their daughter, whose right lung had not yet fully developed
Ellyannah nearly died during her first month of life and was the first baby at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to use a special high-frequency jet ventilator
The little girl’s parents were unable to hold her for 54 days because she was so weak
In just over six months she has grown to 12 pounds and continues to beat the odds despite the bleak outlook at the time of her birth
According to the Center for Disease Control and PreventionPreterm birth affected about 1 in 10 babies born in the United States in 2022, that is, before the 37th week of pregnancy.
But to be born before 26 weeks, like Ellyannah, that number is even smaller.
Data from the World Health Organisation shows that complications of preterm birth are the leading cause of death among children under five and were responsible for approximately 900,000 deaths worldwide in 2019.
Because of Ellyannah’s underdeveloped lungs, doctors feared her chances of survival were slim. They forbid her parents to keep her for 54 days.
The family spent Thanksgiving in the NICU, rocking Ellyannah and reading books while their daughter lay among a sea of wires and beeping monitors.
Juarez said she has been “fighting” since day one and expects life to have great things in store for her daughter.
“And I will love you no matter who you become,” she added.
In 2016, another California girl was born who weighed less than a can of soda.
Ailey Rose Murillo was delivered prematurely at 26 weeks and was given a 1 percent chance of survival.
She was discharged home in January 2017, weighing nine pounds, seven ounces, after a lengthy stay at Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center.