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World’s smallest surviving baby boy

Hi  Messrs. Mses. Japanophiles.   warm spring has at last come,  how are you feeling?  At the same time,  world’s smallest baby boy has come unexpectedly.

I could say this phenomenon is “a miracle” because the smallest baby boy in the world will soon be able to leave hospital after medical staff kept him in a neonatal intensive care unit.

baby boy

How and what is world’s smallest baby boy?

“When he was born, he was so small and fragile, and it seemed as if he would break with a touch. I was so worried,” his mother Toshiko told reporters.

That’s because it was that a baby born weighing just 258 grams (9.1 ounces) as much as a large apple, and measuring 22 centimeters (8.66 inches) tall and his chest circumference was 14.3 cm (5.63 inches) at delivery.

Ryusuke’s mother, Toshiko, who lives in Karuizawa, also in Nagano Prefecture, was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 29 after suffering from hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

She delivered the boy via an emergency caesarean section two days after being hospitalized, at 24 weeks and five days of pregnancy.

Ryusuke, who was born at the hospital here on Oct. 1, 2018, Doctor Takehiko Hiroma of the Nagano Children’s Hospital said “there have been difficulties in the treatment because, immediately after his birth, his blood vessels were too thin to administer intravenous drips”.

He had been nurtured in a neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital where temperature and humidity were completely controlled. The tiny infant was somehow able to get his mouth around a cotton swab tip soaked in breast milk or took in nutrition via a stomach tube.

“I’m really happy to see him growing day by day, thanks to the hospital’s careful efforts,” she said, “now he drinks milk, we can give him a bath.

Nearly seven months later, the boy has grown thirteenfold in weight, now weighing over 3 kilograms. He was expected to be released from the hospital over the weekend.

baby boy
World’s smallest surviving baby boy, weighing same as an apple, ready to go home

Doctor Takehiko Hiroma also said at a press conference that he was “very happy” that the care provided for the baby boy, who has grown to a healthy 3.37 kilograms, was successful.

What else tiniest baby to survive in the world?

The website shows 25 babies worldwide were born weighing less than 300 grams and survived, six of whom were boys.

The previous record of the world’s smallest baby at birth is a boy who was 268 grams when he was born at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward in August 2018, according to the University of Iowa database in the United States.

The infant was sent home on Feb. 20, 2019 making him at that time the world’s lightest-ever newborn boy to be discharged in good health.

As for baby girls, the smallest surviving girl was born in Germany in 2015 weighing 252 grams, according to a registry put together by the University of Iowa of the world’s tiniest surviving babies.

The survival rate of babies born weighing less than 1 kilogram is about 90 percent in Japan, but that of babies less than 300 grams is low, especially for boys.

And the survival rate for tiny babies is substantially lower for boys than for girls.

About the author

古林 茂樹(Shigeki Furubayashi )