Video: Triplets set Guinness World Record for most premature, lightest birth

Three British sisters have officially broken two Guinness World Records for being the lightest, and most premature, triplets to ever survive. The trio, born on February 14, 2021, and named Rubi-Rose, Payton-Jane and Porscha-Mae Hopkins, weighed a total of 1.28kg when they were born.

The triplets' 32-year-old mother, Michaela White, told Guinness World Records that the journey had been "quite traumatic", but also, "the quickest pregnancy [she'd] ever known."

White and her husband Jason (Jay) Hopkins found out they were expecting triplets when White was 19 weeks pregnant – and three weeks later, she went into labour with first triplet Rubi-Rose.

Contractions began in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, and by 12.02pm, all three babies had been born, with Rubi-Rose's two sisters delivered via emergency Caesarean. The first 72 hours of the premature babies' lives were most critical, with each baby required to breathe by themselves for 10 seconds before doctors could intervene with oxygen.

Doctors did not know whether the triplets would survive, White admitted, saying she spent every minute of the first few days after the children were born in their presence, aware that one of them may not "make it."

The sisters were then taken into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where they remained for a total of 216 days before finally making it home. An MRI scan revealed that the triplets had cerebral palsy, resulting in lifelong conditions that will permanently affect their movement and co-ordination.

"It's not easy", White said. "It was very, very stressful the first year they were here." "[For] any parent who has been through it", Hopkins added, of having a child in the NICU, "it is one of the hardest journeys you'll go through."

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