I spoke earlier this week about Neonatologists using unusual procedures to save babies in the hospital.
This odd part of this story is that it is set in India where male infants are highly regarded and families usually decline elaborate treatment for female babies.
In Mehsana town India, which is notorious for its sex ratio of 774 girls per 1,000 boys, this extremely fragile infant weighing a mere 900 gram spells hope for the girl child.
In a highly specialised operation here, doctors bored a food pipe, a critical part of the digestive system, into this premature baby girl.
“In the past couple of months, we have witnessed more parents opting for highly specialised surgeries for their daughters, which was otherwise only the prerogative of the male child,” said paediatric surgeon Dr Anirudh Shah of Amardeep Children’s Hospital.
The infant, not yet named, was prematurely born to a middle-class Soni couple in Mehsana on May 15. “The child, born at 30 weeks, was not only premature but also had a malformed digestive system. Her food pipe was split into two, one abruptly-ending portion forcing the milk, even her saliva, to spill into the wind-pipe choking her,” he said.
While these deformities can be easily addressed with good result in normal children, it was a challenge boring a food pipe in the child who was premature and under-weight.
Meanwhile, the anxious parents and grandparents are keeping their fingers crossed for the well-being of their first-born. “In our hometown, people have a huge preference for a male child. But we do not discriminate between a girl and a boy. Girls are goddess Laxmi reincarnated,” the child’s grandmother, who is a mother of three daughters, told TOI.
I am glad that is family is doing everything they can for their little girl. It is your job as a parent to make sure that nothing bad happens to you kids. Sex should not have any weight on your level of love and affection you have for them.
