An Arizona family is celebrating after their premature baby girl finally was deemed well enough to go home from the hospital.
Kallie Bender, of Gilbert, Arizona, weighed less than 1 pound when she was born in May. She spent 150 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.
Today, the little girl weighs 7 pounds and still depends on an oxygen tank and feeding tube, but her family is glad she is alive.
Ebonie Bender, her mother, told the Daily Mail that she and her husband, Dameon, were happy to find out that Kallie was a girl after having three sons.
From the beginning, however, Bender said her pregnancy was considered high risk because she had blood pressure problems. She went to the doctor frequently for check-ups and, at 24 weeks of pregnancy, was admitted to the hospital.
Several days later, doctors recommended an emergency delivery as the best hope to keep Kallie alive. She was born weighing 13.1 ounces and measuring 10.5 inches, smaller than an average doll.
Kallie spent the next several months on an oscillator to help her breath as she continued to grow and her lungs slowly became stronger.
She also had one operation in June to repair a hole between the two major blood vessels that carry blood from her heart to her body.
The earliest known premature baby to survive outside the womb was born at 21 weeks and four days of pregnancy.