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A BABY born more than four months before her due date has become the youngest premature baby to survive. The girl was born after only 21 weeks and 5 days’ gestation, at Samsung Medical Centre in Seoul, South Korea, and is now a healthy 5-year-old.
In 2012, the girl’s 38-year-old mother was rushed to hospital because the membrane sac encasing her unborn twins had burst – a sign of impending labour. She was told that her twins, which had been conceived by IVF, were extremely unlikely to live, and that active life support is usually only given to preterm infants born at 25 weeks or later.
However, the woman and her husband had a long history of infertility issues and IVF failures and urged their doctors to try to support the twins. The doctors agreed, and gave the mother steroids to try to speed up the development of the