She was 9 in long when she was born and weighed under 8 oz, about the weight of a fizzy drink can or a mobile phone. She made her parents cry, lying there all wrinkly, hooked up to the wires and the oxygen, dwarfed by her incubator and less than half the size of her twin. But Rumaisa Rahman, born 14 weeks early, battled for life and claimed her place in the record books as the smallest baby known to survive. She and her sister, Hiba, who weighed just 1lb 4oz at birth but is now a healthy 5lb, were delivered on September 19, 2004 by Caesarean section near Chicago. Doctors took the agonizing decision to deliver them at just twenty-five weeks and six days because their mother was suffering from such high blood pressure that her life, and the life of the twins she was carrying, were at risk. The gamble paid off. Rumaisa, broke a 15-year-old record set by a baby at the same hospital whose birth weight was just under 10 oz.
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