Miracle

Before the 19^th century any attempt to prevent the death of premature babies was considered a defiance of nature. Death of such babies was considered a natural, humane fate. It wasn’t until the late 19^th century that this concept changed when a few doctors in Europe began pioneering treatments of what were then called feeble Infants.

At the forefront of this medical crusade was a French physician, Dr Pierre Budin. In his work with premature babies, Budin has Identified three major high risk factors that set them apart from full-term infants: they were easily chilled, feeding was the problem because they had difficulty sucking and breathing, and they were prone to infections and respiratory distress.

To address the chilling problem he kept the infants in a sealed box heated by bottles of hot water beneath it.

To feed them, he devised something called a “gavage” tube for depositing food directly into the stomachs of infants too feeble or small to suck.

And when an epidemic struck his Hospital in Paris in 1869, he insisted that his nurses wash and don clean gowns before touching the newborn, the baby bottles and their contents be sterilized and the sick infants and their caretakers be isolated from healthy babies.

Neonatology received a badly needed boost in the post-World War II era when there was a hospital boom. By the early fifties many of the newly built hospitals featured premature-infant-care centers, which led to the development of the modern incubators.

But what really put neonatology on the edge of medical science was the US national tragedy. On August 7, 1963, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born, the third child of the young President J.Kennedy and his wife Jacquelin Kennedy, Patrick was born nearly six weeks early. In 1963 his prematurity posed a formidable challenge to doctors.

After few hours of his delivery he had an ailment now commonly known as respiratory distress syndrome. After only 39 hours of his life Patrick was dead. This galvanized the medical profession and unleashed a tidal wave of research. One of the first breakthroughs came from a pediatrician in Toronto who used a gentle-acting ventilator that could help preemies (premature infants) breathe till their delicate lungs developed or healed.

With his weight at just 1.8 kilos, the 34-week-old Patrick Kennedy would today have better than a 98 percent chance of survival. (Nadia’s weight was 1.2 kilos at 33 weeks, when she was born)

Doctors now have at their command a formidable medical arsenal to help them fight for the life of a premature baby.

But some days it isn’t enough.