"This was the first time I've ever seen babies this small, and I've been in neonatology for 30 years," said Dr. Perla Castor. "And I thought, are we really going to try to save these kids?"
From "The Town Talk," a newspaper in Alexandria, Louisiana. Dr. Castor delivered what Guinness World Records recently confirmed to be the world's smallest surviving twins.
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No doubt it's the dad in me, but I take enormous pleasure in reading stories about preemies who beat the odds. Last month Guinness e-mailed Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital to officially notify the hospital that Chloe and Courtney Smith (now four) were the smallest/lightest twins ever to make it.
According to the newspaper, at birth the twins weighed a combined 25.5 ounces (just over a pound a half). Two sets of twins held the prior world record: 30.33 ounces.
"They not only broke the record, they shattered the record," said a jubilant Jimmy Touchet, the hospital's public relations coordinator.
The girls were delivered March 1, 2000, months early, by Caesarean section at Rapides Women's and Children's Hospital. Immediately taken to Cabrini's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, doctors held out little hope for Courtney and Chloe.
"They each weighed as much as a can of Coke," Theresa Slater, Cabrini's Children's Miracle Network director, told The Town Talk. "And, they were just a little longer than a fountain pen."
Carmen Smith, the girls' mother, said, "We were told not to expect them to live." Then, "after about a week and a half, they told us all the things we could expect to go wrong."
But as the weeks rolled by, none of that happened. "We were very thankful," she told The Town Talk. "Our prayers were answered."
Dr. Castor clearly is still amazed, four years later. "The whole thing was different," Castor told the newspaper. "Having this baby, that for all practical purposes should not have survived. ... I tell parents and staff that most premature babies have peaks and valleys. But theirs were just peaks all the time."
Today, while small (they each weigh 24 pounds), the girls have "no developmental delays and no physical disabilities." They attend special prekindergarten classes.
And, of course, not by any stretch do all babies born very prematurely fare so well. But Courtney's and Chloe's experience reminds us again that each situation is different, and that the preferential option must be to aggressively care for such little babies.
Congratulations to the Smith family. Congratulations to the Christus St. Frances Cabrini's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. And congratulations to The Town Talk for its wonderful March 21 story.
"This was the first time I've ever seen babies this small, and I've been in neonatology for 30 years," said Dr. Perla Castor. "And I thought, are we really going to try to save these kids?"