Happy birthday, Nash Potato! World's most premature baby celebrates his first birthday
Born on 5 July 2024, 133 days earlier than his due date, Nash Keen from Iowa in the US is recognised as the world's most premature baby by Guinness World Records.
At birth he weighed just 285 grams and was 24 centimetres long.
'It feels surreal,' his mother, Mollie Keen, says. 'A year ago we weren't sure what the future would look like and now we've celebrated his first birthday. It's emotional in so many ways: pride, gratitude, even some grief for how different his journey has been. But above all, it feels like a victory.'
Nash Potato, as he's fondly called, celebrated his birthday with a cake with extra cream. He was also gifted 70 outfits and lots of nappies.
Mollie and her husband Randall had been longing to start a family for quite a while. However, their journey to parenthood was challenging as Mollie had what's known as cervical incompetence, a condition that causes the cervix to open prematurely. Additionally, she faces the complexities of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Six months before falling pregnant with Nash, she gave birth to her first child, McKinley. She was born at 18 weeks gestation but sadly passed away.
But the couple refused to give up hope of becoming parents and they were delighted when Mollie fell pregnant with their son.
However, in the early stages Mollie sensed something was wrong.
'When we went to our local doctor's office for the 20-week scan for Nash, I had some concerns about how I was feeling so I asked them to look at me more closely – which they normally don't do at that appointment – and they found I was already two centimetres dilated,' she says.
She soon began experiencing contractions and was prescribed bed rest. This reignited the fears and trauma of her previous pregnancy loss, making the journey even more emotionally challenging.
'We were devastated. We thought we were going through the exact same thing – we thought we were going to lose this baby.'
She had to be hospitalised and doctors tried to delay labour until she was at least 21 weeks as it would be easier to treat a baby who's at least that old.
In the end he was delivered just 10 hours after he surpassed the 21-week mark, with doctors describing the delivery as being a new frontier in maternal-foetal medicine.
'He was so tiny I could barely even feel him on my chest,' his mother says. 'He was covered in wires and monitors and I was very nervous. But the moment he was placed on my chest, all my nerves disappeared. I'd waited so long for that skin-to-skin contact – three weeks to be exact – and it felt like pure relief and love all at once.'
He spent 198 days at University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children's Hospital and had to receive treatment for a perforated bowel, a minor heart defect and other issues. He's still on oxygen and needs a hearing aid.
READ MORE | Cape Town toddler's journey from profound hearing loss to babbling words like 'mama'
'While Nash faced many critical challenges early on, he showed remarkable resilience. After those first few extremely delicate weeks he began to make steady progress, which was truly extraordinary to witness,' Dr Amy Stanford, the neonatologist who assisted him, says.
Despite the challenges, his parents expect their son to have a bright future.
'Nash is going to be able to say, 'You know what? I came into this world fighting,'' his dad says. ''And I'm going to leave fighting.''
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