Tiny Miracle Doctors Think Sophia Is Smallest Baby To Survive In Oregon

Born with a heart the size of an M&M and wrists the thickness of a pencil, Sophia Epiphany Louise Wisdom’s prognosis was uncertain at best when she was born a month ago.

Babies who weigh between 501 grams and 750 grams, roughly a pound to a pound and a half, have only a 59 percent of surviving, according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Sophia weighed far less than that - 290 grams, or a little over 10 ounces.

Average birth weight for babies is about seven pounds. Sophia weighed only one-tenth that much.

Her doctors at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center’s neonatal unit believe Sophia, daughter of Tracy and Robert Wisdom of Carlton, may be the smallest baby ever to survive in Oregon.

In fact, they are aware of only one smaller baby to ever survive anywhere.

But this infant is a fighter.

She is already showing some awareness of her surroundings. She knows when her parents are with her, and when she is being held.

“She’s not as fragile as most babies her size, and that surprises me,” said neonatologist Ron Sklar.

Sophia was born by Caesarian section on March 5, three months early.

Tracy Wisdom suffers from an auto-immune disease that affects the way the placenta functions. She also had to deal with pre-eclampsia, or toxemia, a pregnancy-related form of high blood pressure that can affect both mother and baby.

Sophia was unable to breathe on her own, so doctors had to administer surfactant to keep her lungs from collapsing. She was unable to maintain her own body temperature, so they had to place her in a temperature-controlled incubator.

When Sklar began his fight to save her, inserting a breathing tube into her throat seconds after her birth, he expected her to have to remain on the apparatus for weeks if not months.

He wasn’t sure he could even get the tube inserted in the first place. She was so tiny that he was afraid the equipment would prove too large, despite being designed specifically for tiny preemies.

“As luck would have it,” he said, “it was just small enough.”

Sophia’s breathing improved so rapidly that she was breathing with only the aid of a nasal canula, a less invasive type of tube, by the time she was a week old.

Though she’s now passed her first month, she is still tiny and her fight is far from over.

Before she can go home, Sklar said, she will have to be able to eat without assistance and maintain her own body temperature. He also wants her to be free of apnea spells, in which she fails to breathe on her own.