World’s smallest known baby at birth, who weighed 212 grams, leaves hospital

(CNN) On this day World’s smallest known baby at birth, leaves hospital. A baby born weighing just 212 grams (7.5 ounces) — about as heavy as a softball or an apple — has left hospital after more than a year and arrived at her family home.

Kwek Yu Xuan was born almost four months prematurely in Singapore in June 2020, and was considered by doctors to have a limited chance of survival.

But the hospital that housed her for more than a year announced at the weekend that, “against the odds,” she had been discharged in July at a far healthier weight of 6.3 kilograms (13.9 pounds). She is believed to be the lightest baby ever delivered and discharged well to home. A registry managed by the University of Iowa lists a 230-gram (8.1-ounce) child born in Germany in 2016 as the lightest, while the current Guinness World Record is held by a 245-gram (8.6-ounce) American child born in 2018.

Yu Xuan was delivered by an emergency caesarean section at just under 25 weeks of gestation, Singapore’s National University Hospital said in a statement sent to CNN on Tuesday.