She weighed 351 grams. Less than a can of soda.
Makerita was born at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital at 21 weeks and 3 days of gestation, a threshold so extreme that doctors barely dared to put a number on her chances. Her mother, Annrose, found out she was pregnant just five days before the birth: months earlier, she had experienced what she believed was a miscarriage, when in fact it was a twin pregnancy that no one had detected in time.
Annrose and her husband Misi could not hold their daughter in their arms until she was one month old. They spent 14 weeks in neonatal intensive care, and almost five months after her birth, Makerita—already being called Miracle—walked out of the hospital and headed home to Logan Reserve. Today, she is Australia’s most extremely premature baby to survive, and her case fell just four days of gestation short of the world record.
