The Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., is marking a major milestone for baby E’Layah Faith Pegues, the smallest surviving premature baby ever born at the hospital and “one of the world’s smallest babies ever born,” according to E’Layah’s doctor.
Parents Megan Smith and Eric Pegues celebrated their baby’s original due date on Tuesday at the medical center’s Levine Children’s Hospital. A location where they shared baby E’Layah Faith’s story of fight and survival since Sept. 23, ABC News reports.
Baby E’Layah Faith was born three-and-a-half months before Smith’s due date and weighed 10 ounces and was 10 inches long.
Her neonatologist, Dr. Andrew Herman, told ABC News today that the young girl weighed less than a pound and fit “head-to-toe” in his palm when she was born.
“To be honest, we were unsure if E’Layah was going to make it,” Herman said, “but the doctor who delivered her could see she had a fighting chance, and her parents never lost faith it was possible she’d survive.”
Today, E’Layah is not only surviving but thriving. She now weighs about five times her original birth weight, and she is expected to go home within a week or two, said Herman, her neonatologist and chief medical officer at Levine Children’s Hospital.