Miracle baby Anjalie wins battle for life

Doctors feared the worst when a baby girl was born on January 24 this year at the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital, Mt Hope, weighing one pound six ounces (640 grammes). Her mother, 32-year-old Vashti Dhanraj, gave birth via emergency caesarian section. Baby Anjalie was delivered two months before her due date — March 24 because she had stopped growing inside the uterus, the volume of fluid in the uterus being insufficient, resulting in a breech delivery. At birth, the baby’s head was ten inches (25 cm) — about the size of a cricket ball, while her length was 12.5 inches (32 cm). Anjalie is believed to be the smallest baby born and discharged from any institution in Trinidad in the past 20 years. Yesterday, she returned to Mt Hope to receive her first immunisation shots. 

Vashti, a housewife from Monroe Road in Cunupia, told Newsday yesterday she was shocked when she first saw the baby at the Neonatal Unit, two days after giving birth. “She was very, very blue-black and tiny. You could only see eyes and hair. She was just a frame, but everything was formed, fingers and toes, but you could not see skin.” The sight caused her to become very frightened and she fainted. Vashti said the baby was not even big enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Tubes were attached to the heart, nose, feet and hand. She had several sleepless nights over the following days about the condition of her baby. When the baby developed an infection on the third day, doctors informed Vashti that the child would not survive. Medication eventually helped clear the infection. Although afraid and plagued by negative thoughts, Vashti and husband, Dianan, prayed constantly. 

“I believe in prayers. I never gave up hope. I prayed, my husband prayed. Every day I visited her. The nurses said it’s a miracle.” Nurses at the Unit expected the baby to be warded for several months. After a month, Vashti held her daughter, Anjalie, for the first time. “I felt so happy to know she is okay and all the tubes came off. I also felt sad remembering how she was.” Vashti was discharged after one week, but Anjalie remained warded until April 4. Vashti visited every day and talked to Anjalie, telling her she would leave and go home one day. She now weighs five pounds and is doing well. “Everything is good. She is drinking her milk and getting chubby.” Vashti thanked the doctors and nurses at the Women’s Hospital for taking care of Anjalie. Charmaine Codrington, corporate communications manager of the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA), said the baby was given all the equipment necessary for survival “such as continuous monitors, infusion pumps to accurately administer the minute volumes of antibiotics and intravenous fluids and allowed one to one nursing each shift.”

Codrington said the risks of extreme prematurity are mammoth and provide many challenges for medical, nursing and support staff. Codrington said the baby was “a model extreme low birth weight premature infant” and exemplified  various complications. She said these were effectively managed by the medical and nursing teams who were committed to ensuring that the baby was discharged home to her parents. The baby required respiratory support, with extra oxygen on her first two days of life. Due to her immature intestine, she developed suspected necrotising enterocolitis (where the intestines could perforate) on the third day. Pharmacological teams at Mt Hope and Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) collaborated and provided a “cocktail of various nutrients to feed the baby through the veins, since she could not be fed until the necrotising enterocolitis resolved.”

The baby was jaundiced from the third day and needed phototherapy treatment for two days. Her blood platelets, which were already low on admission, continued to fall. However, she responded to antibiotics on the ninth day. Codrington said the baby was able to start receiving breast milk on the ninth day, which was lovingly supplied by her mother. She was given 0.5 mL for each feed and this was gradually increased to 12 mL on day 30.