He’s crawling into the record books.
An Iowa infant who was born at just 21 weeks of gestation celebrated his first birthday earlier this month with a new title – “the most premature baby” of all time.
Nash Keen weighed only 10 ounces when he was born on July 5, 2024 – 133 days before his due date, early enough to land him in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The tot, affectionately called “Nash Potato,” spent six months in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital, growing into a happy and strong baby boy.
“Nash is so full of personality,” his mom, Mollie, told the Associated Press Wednesday.
“Being in the NICU as long as he was, you’d think that he would be, you know, more fragile and stuff. And he’s not. He’s a very determined, curious little boy, and he’s just all smiles all the time,” the doting mother said.
Nash’s early arrival into the world came after Mollie’s 20-week prenatal checkup, where she found out she was already 2 centimeters dilated.
She went into labor days later.
Nash was born at 147 days, beating out the previous Guinness Book of World Records holder for “world’s most premature baby” by one day.
Mollie lauded the medical staff who worked round the clock to keep little Nash’s heart beating.
“One of the things I noticed about the medical team is that they were very calm,” she told the AP.
“You never really saw them, like, get anxious or anything. And so we kind of just learned to, like, watch them. And if, you know, if the doctors and the nurses weren’t freaking out, there was no reason for us to freak out.”
The obstetrician who delivered Nash, Dr. Malinda Schaefer, told the Associated Press she informed Mollie and her husband Randall before birth that their baby could be burdened with serious medical complications.
“It is really important to me to have honest and open conversations with parents, so they feel fully informed to make the best decision for them and their family,” Schaefer said.
Despite requiring oxygen to breathe and a feeding tube for sustenance, Nash is growing stronger every day and on the road to hitting standard child development markers.
“He’s learning how to stand on his two feet, which is awesome,” Mollie told the AP, adding, “He’s got a lot of strength in those legs.”
Nash’s survival is all the sweeter for the couple who previously lost a child to a miscarriage.