World's most premature baby celebrates first birthday

The Guardian

3 days ago

An Iowa toddler who was born when his mother was less than five months pregnant isn't only the most premature baby recognized by Guinness World Records after recently turning one.
As his mother, Mollie Keen, put it, Nash Keen is also 'very determined, curious … and he's just all smiles all the time' after surviving against what Guinness described as 'phenomenal odds'.
'Nash is going to be able to … say, 'You know what? I came into this world fighting,'' the boy's father, Randall Keen, said in an interview that Guinness published Wednesday. ''And I'm going to leave fighting.''
The organization's database of about 40,000 records has long inspired fascination from the public. And Nash's path to that database began on 5 July 2024, when he was born at the gestational age of exactly 21 weeks in the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children's hospital in Iowa City.
Nash's birth came 133 days ahead of Mollie's expected due date, based on a typical full-term pregnancy of 280 days, an article on guinnessworldrecords.com said.
His birth was the second time in less than two years that Mollie had given birth prematurely. She recounted how she and Randall lost their daughter, McKinley, after she was born at a gestational age of nearly 18 weeks.
After the couple became pregnant with Nash, 'we were so excited, but also very nervous,' Mollie said. 'We didn't get our hopes up.'
Nash weighed only 10 ounces (283 grams), which is about the size of a soap bar, when he was born. He had to spend the next six months in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) before he was allowed to go home in January to Ankeny, Iowa.
Mollie recalled to Guinness that she and Randall 'weren't sure if he'd even survive those first critical hours. But we wanted to give him the best chance.'
The baby underwent 'highly specialized care, constant surveillance and frequent monitoring' while he faced a series of substantial 'challenges early on', Dr Amy Stanford – a neonatologist who helped care for Nash – told Guinness.
Yet 'he showed remarkable resilience,' Stanford added. 'After those first few extremely delicate weeks, he began to make steady progress, which was truly extraordinary to witness.'
As the Associated Press noted, Nash's story illustrates the growing number of extremely premature infants who are receiving life-saving treatment and surviving.
Nash emerged from his NICU stay with as good an outcome as could be hoped for by medical science, as his doctors see it.
At just over a year old, Nash still required oxygen to help him breathe, and he was nourished exclusively through a feeding tube. His parents had been preparing for him to try pureed foods.
Nash's doctors were optimistic that a minor heart defect would resolve itself as he grew up. And he was not quite yet crawling, though he had started rolling over.
None of those developmental realities had barred him from demonstrating his budding personality, Randall told Guinness.
'Whenever you call him 'Nash potato', or you cheer him on when he's trying to pull himself up … he just hams it up,' Randall said. 'It makes him want to succeed and do more.'
A small gathering of family close friends joined Nash and his family to celebrate his first birthday. He was feted with new outfits, educational toys, diapers and the certificate from Guinness – now that he had beaten out by a single day the organization's previous most premature baby record holder, who was born in 2020 in Alabama.
Mollie told Guinness she and Randall are as happy as Nash has been.
'I love waking up to him,' she remarked. 'He's truly … the best thing that could have happened to us.'
AP contributed reporting