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Catching up with the world's most premature twins
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Jul 3, 2024
The most premature twins are Adiah Laelynn and Adrial Luka Nadarajah (both Canada), who were born 126 days early, at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada, on 4 March 2022.
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0:00
I'm Shakina
0:02
And I'm Kevin. And we're the parents of Adia and Adriel, who were born 22 weeks exactly
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They were born 126 days early. Hi baby girl. In many parts of the world, babies are not resuscitated
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or no medical intervention is provided if they're born before 24 weeks, 27 weeks
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In some places, even if they're born before 31 weeks, nothing is done to save their lives
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And so we're really excited that this record has been raising awareness
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around the world about the viability of twins born earlier than 24, 27, or 31 weeks
0:49
And so we're hopeful that policies will change around the world to allow twins born earlier to receive the medical intervention
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that will give them a hope, a chance at life. For the first 21 weeks, everything in the pregnancy was going very smoothly
1:08
The ultrasounds, the tests, results all came back fine and the babies were progressing smoothly
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Everything changed drastically on March 2, 2022, when Shakina was 21 weeks and 5 days into the pregnancy
1:21
To our absolute shock, within a few minutes of arriving at the hospital
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we were told that I was in labor and that the twins would be born within the next few hours
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The first thing I was told at the hospital was that if the babies were born even a few minutes before they turned 22 weeks
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it would be a death sentence for them, as the hospital was only able to provide medical intervention
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and resuscitate or intubate babies born at 22 weeks and after. We were warned that even if the babies survived their extreme preterm birth and resuscitation
1:57
they would be faced with significant disabilities impacting their quality of life
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Although the outlook presented to us was very grim, we had full belief in our babies
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Miraculously, although I had now been in labor for more than 40 hours
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the babies were not born until exactly one hour after they turned 22 weeks on March 4, 2022
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Our daughter Adia weighed 330 grams and our son Adriel weighed 420 grams
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We were told that Adia was the smallest baby the hospital had ever seen
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And we made it a point to spend more than 10 hours daily with them
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And we saw so much progress in their development daily. The babies were able to overcome every major medical challenge that they faced
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Altogether, Adia spent 161 days in the NICU and Adriel spent 167 days in the NICU
2:57
They came home almost six months later and to the surprise of everyone
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they did not need any oxygen at home or breathing tubes or feeding tubes
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They were able to feed and breathe independently. Since coming out of the hospital and being back home
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it's been amazing to see the twins grow and their personalities emerge
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They'd recently turned two. And they've started saying new words, singing songs
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So it's exciting to see them interact with each other and emerge out of their shell
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Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Adriel is very active. He loves climbing, all of our furniture
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He is a really good runner. Adia also walks really well. They're making really great progress with their gross motor skills and fine motor skills
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They have a really sweet relationship with each other. Although they do fight a lot over toys and books, they are best friends
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We always see them sneaking hugs and sneaking kisses. Although they're twins, they do have very different personalities as well and very unique interests
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Adia absolutely loves music. She loves humming. She picks up melodies really quickly and she's able to sing along or hum along to the tunes of various songs
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Adriel is a bookworm. He absolutely loves books. What he loves doing is bringing books to me and bringing books to Kevin and asking us to read books out to him
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Twins don't actually know that they're record holders yet. But as parents, we're just incredibly proud of how far they've come and how they've been able to beat the odds
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They were first-handed to them. We're just excited for the story to create more awareness about prematurity and how early babies can be born and how early they can be viable
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More importantly, we've said this once before and we'll say this again
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we do hope that this record is one that is broken because it means that more preterm babies are being saved and thriving
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