BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – Michelle Butler was just over halfway through her pregnancy when her water broke and contractions wracked her body. She couldn’t escape a terrifying truth: Her twins were coming much too soon.
Dr. Brian Sims entered the delivery room and gently explained that babies born so early likely won’t live. He told Butler he could keep them comfortable as they died.
But she pleaded through tears: “Give my twins a chance to survive.”
And he did.
Until recently, trying to save babies born this early would have been futile. Butler was in the fifth month of her pregnancy, one day past 21 weeks gestation. That’s seven weeks earlier than what doctors once considered “the lower limit of viability,” the earliest an infant could possibly survive outside the womb. But over the last half century, medical science has slowly shifted that boundary downward.