At birth, baby Taylor Rideout weighed just 12.5 ounces and was just 10 inches long, making her the smallest baby ever to survive at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“She’s a fighter,” said Taylor’s mother Brittany Rideout. At 80 days and now weighing 3 pounds, Taylor has come a long way. The tiny baby’s survival wasn’t a sure thing.
“When I was pregnant with her, I had two strokes and two seizures. She still survived,” said Rideout.
Rideout has Lupus, and the pregnancy was threatening her life, so doctors delivered the baby 14 weeks early in March.
“I thought, ‘there’s no chance of this tiny baby surviving,’” said Dr. Toby Yanowitz. “She’s amazing. Most babies under a pound don’t survive.”
Taylor is nicknamed pop can because that’s how much she weighed when she was born.
Rideout has some advice for other parents facing similar challenges.
“I would tell them don’t give up on their child if they’re born small or have a disease or anything. There’s a God in this world, and if it’s meant to be, it will be,” said Rideout.
Taylor is being moved to a transitional unit at the hospital and is expected to go home in a few weeks.
Doctors said the prognosis is good.