Mom and 24-week preemie survive after doctors perform emergency delivery

A little girl who was a "micro-preemie" at birth has defeated the odds and is now home with her family.

Key Takeaways:

• Doctors told Annie Babcock she needed to deliver her baby at 24 weeks due to health complications.

• Babcock and her husband were offered the opportunity to give their baby comfort care until she passed, or a "trial of life" at another hospital. They chose to give their daughter every opportunity to live.

• Their baby, Nora, survived and was discharged after spending months in the NICU. She is now at home with her parents.

• The Babcocks were not offered an abortion — the direct and intentional killing of their daughter — as a way of saving Annie's life.

The Details:

Texas resident Annie Babcock was just 24 weeks pregnant when she learned that her baby had intrauterine growth restriction, while she had pre-eclampsia and placental abruption. Doctors said her baby needed to be delivered.

"They said we can either deliver here and do comfort care and let the baby pass, or go to Texas Health in Fort Worth and do a trial of life," Babcock said (emphasis added).

That "trial of life" meant delivering the baby and then offering all possible medical care to ensure she had a fighting chance at surviving.

Babcock and her husband Owen decided they would fight to ensure their little girl, Nora, was given every opportunity to live. Babcock was flown to Fort Worth by helicopter, and then given an emergency c-section. Nora was born weighing 13.1 ounces and was 10.5 inches long, just about the size of a soda can.

"It was a huge shock when they said she was going to be born at 24 weeks," Babcock said. "I had no idea a baby less than a pound could be born and also live. It was terrifying, but also like miraculous."

"When she was born so small I didn't think she could live," she added. "And the nurses are like, no, she's going to thrive."

After months of specialized care following her March birth, Nora was released from the hospital in July. She now weighs a healthy 10 pounds.

Zoom In:

Dr. Megan Schmidt, neonatologist at Pediatrix Neonatology of Texas and Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital, said Nora's extremely small size at birth made her case "quite rare."

"You're really battling against nature," Schmidt said. "And trying to get this body that is not ready to be in this world and be in the outside world, you're trying to force it to stay in this outside world and to function. It takes highly, highly specialized care to even to be able to have a chance to have these babies survive."

Notably, Babcock's doctors did not offer her an abortion — knowing, rightly, that delivering her baby early in order to save Babcock's life was not the same as directly and intentionally killing that baby. If the situation is dire, the child can be delivered early, as Nora was. In this instance, that early delivery resulted in the survival of both Babcock and her baby. This narrative directly contradicts many stories which claim that when a woman's life is in danger, abortion (intentional killing) is the only answer.

The Bottom Line:

All babies deserve every chance possible at life, no matter how small. In Nora's case, that chance led to her miraculous survival.