Baby Phoenix Teanby was born so prematurely that her skin was transparent.
The tiny baby girl arrived 15 weeks early and weighed just 1 pound, 8 ounces, according to the Clacton Gazette.
But today, she is thriving at home with her family in Essex, England, after overcoming medical complications because of her early birth.
Her mother, Tori Teanby, said she rushed to the hospital in January after her water broke. She said she felt like she was going into labor, but the midwives thought differently. She was 25 weeks pregnant.
“Midwives kept telling me it wasn’t labor, my cervix was closed. Connor went home to get us some more clothes as we knew I was being kept in inevitably,” she said. “All of a sudden I felt the urge to push and they rushed in, pressed the emergency buzzer and about 30 people were in the room.”
Phoenix was born a short time later on Jan. 25, and she was fighting for her life.
According to the report, her condition began to deteriorate over the next seven days, and the red protein in her blood dropped dangerously low. Her parents said they could see their daughter’s veins because her skin was so transparent.
Phoenix received three blood transfusions that “pinked” her up and saved her life, according to the report. She spent 12 weeks in the hospital until she grew well enough to go home.
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“My little miracle had gone from pale and lethargic with veins showing on her stomach, to a pinked up princess,” her mother said. “By the time the transfusion was finished she looked and acted like a different baby.”
Modern medical advances are enabling younger and smaller premature babies to survive and thrive. The smallest recorded surviving baby weighed less than 9 ounces at birth. Born in California in December 2018, baby Saybie was deemed well enough to go home in May.
The earliest known premature baby to survive outside the womb was born at 21 weeks and four days of pregnancy. In 2017, the journal Pediatrics highlighted the girl’s survival story.
Research published in 2015 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 23 percent of premature infants are surviving as early as 22 weeks of pregnancy. However, the study also found that some hospitals do not treat babies at this early age.
