The baby boy weighed about half a pound at birth and left the hospital five months later weighing 7lbs in February!
The world’s tiniest baby is finally back home following five months at a Tokyo hospital after he was born weighing just half of a pound.
The baby boy, whose name has not been made public, went home on Feb. 20, much to the delight of his parents who feared for the baby’s life, according to Reuters. He was delivered last August via C-section and weighed 268 grams (9.45 oz) after he failed to gain weight in the womb.
He went home from the hospital weighing 7 lbs.
“I am grateful that he has grown this big because, honestly, I wasn’t sure he could survive,” the boy’s mother told Reuters.
The baby was born at 24 weeks gestation at Tokyo’s Keio University Hospital and could fit in the palm of a person’s hands, CNN reported. Dr. Takeshi Arimitsu, who treated the baby, told CNN that the baby needed a ventilator and an umbilical catheter for infusion therapy when he was born.
Arimitsu notes that premature births aren’t that common in Japan, adding that the rate of infants’ low birthweight “is almost 10 percent in Japan.”
RELATED STORY: Identical Micro-Preemie Twin Girls Among Youngest Babies to Be Born at Iowa Hospital
Before the baby born in Tokyo, the record for the world’s smallest baby went to a baby boy born in 2009 in Germany at just over 9 ounces, according to the University of Iowa’s Tiniest Babies registry.
The news comes just weeks after a pair of micro-preemie twin girls were born at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, according to the Associated Press.
Sisters Keeley James and Kambry Lee Ewoldt were born 18 weeks early, at just 22 weeks and one day gestation on Nov. 24, placing them among the youngest surviving premature babies born at the hospital.
“I’d never heard of babies being born this early,” the girls’ father Wesley Ewoldt said, according to the AP. “We didn’t have a lot of positive thoughts. They told us from the get-go this is going to be a roller-coaster ride.”
Both babies were about the length of a dollar bill at birth, with Keeley weighing 1 pound and Kambry born at just 13.4 ounces, the AP reported. Dr. Jonathan Klein, medical director of the NICU at University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courierthis link opens in a new tab that Keeley and Kambry are “clearly” among the top four or five youngest babies ever delivered at the hospital.