Image Source: Facebook / Logan Hospital | Baby Miracle and her mother
A baby girl born at just 21 weeks and three days has become the most premature baby known to have survived in Australia.
Makerita Tanuvasa, affectionately known by her middle name, Miracle, weighed just over 12 ounces at birth, approximately the weight of a tin of soup, and measured only 12 inches long.
Born at a gestational age when resuscitation is not usually attempted, Miracle defied expectations after spending months receiving specialist neonatal care.
Her mother, Annrose Tanuvasa, recalled fearing that her daughter would not survive when she first saw her.
“I took one look at her and I was like, ‘There’s no way she’s going to make it’,” Annrose said.
But the tiny baby immediately began fighting for life.
“It was just like she was here to fight,” her mother added.
Miracle was placed in an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, surrounded by tubes and cables providing the medical support necessary to keep her alive.
Her father, Misi Tanuvasa, recalled how extraordinarily small his daughter was. “We weren’t able to hold her, but she was very, very small,” he said.
It was another four weeks before Miracle’s parents were finally permitted to hold their daughter.
“It was magical, but it was also very scary, holding such a tiny baby,” Annrose said.
Despite being born at just over 21 weeks, Miracle continued to survive and develop, astonishing even the medical professionals treating her.
“Even the doctors couldn’t explain how she was able to survive everything she’s gone through,” Misi said.
Annrose recalled one doctor telling the family: “We can’t give you any answers. Everything is actually just a miracle.”
The remark proved particularly appropriate given their daughter’s middle name.
Miracle remained in intensive care for 14 weeks before being transferred to a special care nursery. She finally left hospital when she was more than four months old.
Registered nurse Renee Judd, who has worked in neonatal care for 16 years, said she had never previously cared for a baby born at such an early gestation.
When Miracle was eventually discharged, doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff lined the corridors to celebrate as her parents carried her home for the first time.
Miracle’s extraordinary survival is another striking example of the advances in neonatal medicine that have enabled increasingly premature babies to survive.
Her birth at 21 weeks and three days is also significantly earlier than the de jure 24-week abortion limit in Britain, and de facto abortion up-to-birth in England, Wales, and Australia, demonstrating the remarkable development and resilience of unborn children several weeks before that legal threshold.
In Queensland, Miracle’s home state, the “conservative” Liberal-National Party leader and Premier, David Crisafulli, put an abortion moratorium on his MPs, banning them from raising the issue in the state parliament out of fear his party would reverse abortion up-to-birth, a move he supported.
SPUC CEO John Deighan has sent his well wishes to Miracle’s family, saying: “Stories like these are evermore frequent, and in a fight for the most vulnerable that is so often a losing one a great ray of hope. Miracle is living proof that size doesn’t determine a child’s strength or value.”
He continued, “Australia’s barbaric abortion up-to-birth regime is become a more contentious political issue, and we hope that stories like this will help turn public opinion against the death lobby both in Australia and Britain.”
