An extremely premature baby who was born weighing less than 2 pounds at just 24 weeks and five days gestation nearly a year ago was discharged from North Memorial Health’s neonatal intensive care unit in Maple Grove, Minnesota, and now thriving in the care of his thankful parents.
While he was released to his parents on Friday, weighing 20 pounds, baby Adonis will still need oxygen support. But his doctors are hopeful he won’t need the support as he grows.
His father, however, is more than hopeful; he is faithful about his son’s future.
“It was God’s plan, because we didn’t have no control of anything,” Junior Rancy-Quaye told CBS Minnesota. “Just have faith, put your trust in God, that’s the only recipe that we’ve got.”
When Adonis was born last October, health officials told his parents, Jasmin Wellington and Rancy-Quaye, that his survival was a long shot.
One hospital nurse, Katherine Martinson, remembers how “really, really sick” the boy was in the “first couple of days.”
“I remember going home and coming back and saying, ‘I hope and pray he’s still here,'” she told the outlet. “It’s a miracle that he’s going home.”
Studies show that extremely preterm birth, defined as birth before 28 weeks of gestation, only occurs in some 0.7% of births in America annually.
“A lot of babies at that gestation that are born that early go to a different hospital to get a trach, or g-tube, or other specialized care that we don’t have here. The fact he’s going home with his family is a huge deal,” said Martinson, who believes that all babies should be given a chance at life no matter how early they are born.
“I want people to believe in miracles, because he really is, he really is a miracle. I know other people have said that, but he truly is. Miracles do happen,” she said. “Give babies a chance when they’re born that early; a lot of people don’t realize they can exceed expectations, even when they’re born that early.”
A review of longitudinal cohort studies performed over the last three decades shows that extreme prematurity is a significant driver of neurodevelopmental impairments, psychiatric disorders, asthma, cardiovascular disease and renal disease among children.
Jasmin Wellington said her son’s journey was “long,” noting that he contracted methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and pneumonia on separate occasions in his first few months of life.
“It’s been a lot of ups and downs. It’s been a long journey. Definitely a lot of anxiety in the beginning when he had more critical care,” she said. “It’s hard to describe a long NICU journey like this. I really don’t know how I even survived.”
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