They call her a "five star" baby and rightly so because she is probably the "most premature" baby alive in the country.
Saanvi, now four months old, earned her flattering nickname because she was born in the fifth month or the 23rd week of her mother's pregnancy.
She beat the record of Jagjit Kaur's daughter who was born after 24 weeks of pregnancy on June 13, 2008 in Ludhiana.
Before these two gutsy girls, 40-yearold Sangeeta Shah's baby, born in the 26th week of pregnancy, held the record. Shah's child was born in June 2005.
For the record, a foetus's lungs, brain and eyes are hardly fully developed in the fifth month or the second trimester.
Saanvi, born at Fortis Hospital, Shalimar Bagh in Delhi, on October 18 last year, was so tiny that she could fit in a tea cup and weighed just 600 grams at birth.
"She would fit in our palms," R.G. Holla, the senior consultant and head of neonatology at Fortis Hospital, said.
"The water sac in which the baby grows in the womb was ruptured during the 23rd week of her mother Seema's pregnancy. The baby was delivered normally but she weighed just 600 grams at birth. The survival of incredibly low birth-weight children less than 750 grams in the best of hospitals is abysmally low," Holla said.
Soon after her birth, her incredible fight to survive began. And it was a tough battle as well for her patient parents Sumeet and Seema Mallik and the doctors. All of them knew that the survival rate of such premature babies is less than 10 per cent.
"It is impossible for us to duplicate conditions similar to the womb, but we tried our best, providing the most advanced critical care, with minimum noise, light and painful stimuli," Vivek Jain, neonatology consultant at Fortis, said.
"She was on mild medicines and a tube was inserted in her wind pipe because her lungs were not fully developed," he added.
After her birth, the baby's weight dropped to 550 grams. "The doctors told us that the child may not survive. But I was keeping my hopes alive," Seema said.
But Saanvi recovered. The child has been so special to the doctors and nurses that they didn't mind working overtime for the baby.
"I never parked my car inside my home as taking the car out would take at least 15 minutes. That could prove fatal in case of an emergency," Jain said.
Saanvi's parents, who are from Pitampura, had pooled in all their savings to pay around `15 lakh to the hospital.
"I was working at an equity firm. When Saanvi was born, I had no time for office. I couldn't continue with the job and I had to give up. I am exhausted financially but I am happy that my daughter is alive," Sumeet said.
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