What parents experienced when their baby was born weighing 450 grams.
Benjamin Miller did not expect his wife Lindsay to give birth in her fifth and a half months of pregnancy. However, the cramps that the expectant mother felt that day turned out to be real contractions. Doctors could no longer stop premature birth …
Baby Ward was born with a weight of only 450 grams and a height of 30 centimeters.
“On the first night, one doctor told us bluntly: the chances that the baby will grow up normal is not much: 50 to 50,” says Benjamin. “And all we had to do was just pray.”
Little Ward’s father, a photographer by profession, captured several familiar moments from the first days of the baby’s life and collected from this video, which moved the entire Internet to tears.
Here is the footage of Benjamin’s wife picking up their son for the first time. Ward was only 4 days old at the time. It’s all covered with pipes and wires. The nurses helped to position the baby and medical equipment so that the baby could snuggle against the mother’s breast for the first time.
A young mother looks at the camera and smiles, gently stroking the baby, but then suddenly tilts her head and covers her mouth with her hand, unable to hold back her tears.
Early childbirth was not Ward’s only problem. On the 10th day of his life, an examination showed that blood had entered his brain tissue. The baby’s father remembers crying and praying all the way to the hospital that day:
“And then I go into the room, I see him lying there. He looks the same as yesterday. But he is powerless to cope with everything that has piled on him. And this is not his fault “
Fortunately, the bleeding stopped and the blood slowly absorbed into the brain. After spending 100 days in the premature hospital, Ward finally went home with his parents.
“When we brought our son home, it was an indescribable feeling,” says Miller. “It was a day with a capital letter, a real holiday.”
Benjamin posted a touching video on the anniversary of Ward’s discharge from the hospital. And it was watched by over 3,6 million people.
“People have no idea what a neonatal intensive care unit is or how the parents of these babies are feeling – they are scared to death.”
Miller didn’t expect most of the comments on the video to come from other dads who shared their stories. Benjamin was amazed at how similar their stories were.
“This video is about me”, “This is exactly what I went through,” the fathers wrote in the comments.
At 16 months old, Ward looked like a one-year-old child. However, the boy had no health problems.
“The doctors appreciated his development and said that he was no different from his peers,” says the baby’s father.
Ward’s parents say their child loves to watch videos with them on their tablet.
“But it’s probably only at the age of 16-17 that he will really understand what he and we had to go through in the first months of his life,” the Millers say.