Miracle Baby

Making history last month, doctors and staff at South Florida’s Baptist Children’s Hospital released young Amillia Sonja Taylor, born last Fall at just 21 weeks old. Going home after spending four months in the neonatal intensive care unit, Baby Taylor is documented as the world’s youngest baby to ever survive. Taylor was born on October 24, 2006, at just 21 weeks old and weighing just under 10 ounces at birth. She has become a true miracle baby. The medical community defines the age at which most babies have the strongest chance to survive outside the womb at 23 weeks. And while Baby Taylor needed extra care and attention, she is now healthy and thriving and has gone home with parents Eddie and Sonja Taylor.

Baby Taylor continues to catch the attention of a society which all too often determines the fate of unborn children before birth. At just more than half way through a full term gestation period, Baby Taylor was born breathing without assistance and making attempts at crying.

Since there is no known baby born at less that 23 weeks in gestational age that has ever survived, this miracle baby is forcing the medical community to rethink the age at which they define viability. The Taylor’s neonatologist, William Smalling, M.D. agrees, “today we can save babies that would have never survived ten years ago.”

The life and birth of Amillia can serve as a reminder to all of us of the miracle of life inside the womb and the importance of working to protect the unborn. For more information about life before birth and other life affirming issues, visit www.rtl.org.

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