Ellonn Smartt wasn’t expecting to give birth until November.
She was 23 weeks pregnant, lived in Des Moines, Iowa, and had a normal day at work and shopping when she told her partner she felt the baby would be born that day. Ten minutes later, her water broke.
At Iowa Methodist Medical Center, doctors told her she would have to give birth in one or two days and that there was a good chance the baby wouldn’t survive. That’s when, she said, she fell apart. But she also remembered something: “She knew that if she panicked, the baby would sense it and become stressed”.
On July 11, 2019, Jaden Wesley Morrow was born by emergency C-section. He weighed 13 ounces, less than half the weight of a full-term baby according to the WHO, and was slightly bigger than his mother’s hand. Even so, he was born moving his arms and toes, and trying to breathe on his own.
He was transferred to the neonatal ICU at Blank Children’s Hospital. Within two days, he was already taking breast milk and was the smallest baby born there in the last decade. Fewer than 1 in 5 babies born at 23 weeks survive.
Jaden lived 25 days. According to Today, he died surrounded by his family from an infection his immune system couldn’t handle. The family tied his hospital bracelets to balloons and released them into the sky.