'Tiniest baby ever born' goes home from hospital

A baby girl who weighed under 10oz at birth has been sent home from a hospital by doctors who believe she is the tiniest human being ever to survive.

'She was immediately lively and active,' said Margarita Psaraki, a paediatrician in the Florence hospital where she was born. 'This helped us to help her.'

At the parents' wishes, doctors were identifying neither the baby nor the parents, who live near Florence. The medical team nicknamed the girl 'Pearl'.

The baby was born in early February during the twenty-seventh week of pregnancy. She went home on Friday weighing 2 kilograms (4.4lb).

Doctors told a press conference the previous record had been set in the 1990s by a baby in Japan who weighed 300 grammes (10.5 oz) at birth.

Early in the pregnancy, 'Pearl's' mother was diagnosed as having a problem with her arteries, and at one point risked having a leg amputated, doctors said. That convinced them to deliver the baby early but at a stage when survival was possible.

Dr Firmino Rubaltelli, in charge of the medical team that cared for the baby predicted her chances of having a normal life were 'nearly 100 per cent'.

Many of the premature babies who do survive birth at the twenty-seventh week or even later go on to have serious physical or mental handicaps, and there is debate in the world of medicine and ethics over how much extraordinary intervention should be used in such cases.

'I was afraid of holding her, said Psaraki. At birth, she was 25 centimetres (10 in) long. 'But that's when she was stretched out. Normally babies curl up and then she would fit right into your hand.'

After delivery, the baby's weight dropped to 255 grammes (8.92oz), but she rebounded. Her mother was allowed to nurse her when the baby reached 700 grammes (1.53lb).

'Her skin was so thin,' said Psaraki, adding that the baby 'was struggling to breathe' and had to be intubated at the beginning.

A company designed special instruments, such as tubing, to help care for the baby because she was so small.

The parents wanted their baby's story told to inspire hope in other parents, doctors said.