As her record of being the youngest surviving prematurely born baby in the country still stands unchallenged, Kamna, who was fondly referred to as Kuku by her parents till she got her real name, is a healthy kid at one year and three months today.

However, doctors prefer to say the girl child - born on June 13 last year - is yet to celebrate her first birthday since as per her expected date of birth, she was expected on October 1. But she came into the world three months before.

Kamna's birth at just 24 weeks of pregnancy, which is the shortest gestation period turning into a surviving infant as per the medical records so far, was seen as a challenge by the doctors at the SPS Hospitals here.

"She has been a helpful kid ever since her birth," he mother Jagjit Kaur smiles and adds she has been pretty normal all these months. With a birth weight of just 850 grams, she was at a high risk as the neonatologists say every child born with a birth weight less than 1,500 grams requires extreme levels of neonatal care.

"We took her home after a hospital stay of two months. Even then doctors had advised us to keep a check on the child for infections and apnea of the prematurity," Jagjit reminisces.

"I would check her movements by touching her while she was asleep. I did this almost every half an hour at night and this went on for full one month," she says.

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