Born at Mount Sinai Hospital: The world’s most premature twins

Adiah and Adrial Nadarajah were born when their mother was exactly 22 weeks pregnant. One day prior, when Shakina Rajendram was experiencing preterm labour, she was transferred from a community hospital to Mount Sinai Hospital where the teams in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) specialize in caring for the youngest and most medically fragile newborns in Ontario.

One hour after midnight, and 126 days early, Shakina gave birth to a girl named Adiah. Twenty-three minutes later, her brother Adrial was born. Both babies, who weighed less than a pound each were successfully resuscitated.

“None of us knew what the long-term consequences of the twins’ medical problems would be; however, one thing was certain — their parents would never give up hope,” wrote Dr. Prakesh Shah, Paediatrician-in-Chief at Sinai Health in a recent article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) entitled “Dilemmas of modern neonatology: Care of extremely preterm infants.”

The NICU at Mount Sinai Hospital follows the Family Integrated Care approach that guides how our teams provide care for infants. The philosophy focuses on the importance of families being present, talking to the babies, touching them and eventually participating in care.

Knowing how their children were born at the right time to be provided active care, by the difference of only one hour guided the parent’s decision to continue to advocate for their children.

“We watched both babies almost die in front of our eyes several times and were asked by doctors to consider when we would withdraw medical care for them. Although devastated, we reiterated that we would never stop fighting for our babies,” Kevin Nadarajah, the twins’ father, wrote in the CMAJ article.

Both parents were encouraged to aid in the care of their children throughout their almost six-month stay in the NICU.

The world’s most premature twins, Adiah and Adrial recently celebrated their first birthday surrounded by family and friends.