OUR MIRACLE GIRL HOME AT LAST

Ruaché was premature and mom nearly didn’t make it – but now they’re together and counting their blessings

-  CARLA COETZEE

SHE was born at 25 weeks, barely a week after newborns are deemed viable, and weighed no more than a can of cooldrink – just 440g.

For months little Ruaché Botha’s parents watched as doctors and nurses scrambled to bring her back from the brink – her heart stopped, her lungs collapsed and there were endless complications.

“After I got to 10, I stopped counting the number of times her heart stopped,” mom Mari (30) says. “The pediatrician told us to prepare for the worst. My mother-in-law and I prayed so much the doctor said we’d tire God out. But here we are today.”

Ruaché – one of the smallest babies ever to survive in SA – has beaten the odds and defied doctors.

A total of 330 days after her precarious entry into the world, she was recently deemed well enough to go home – and when YOU visits the family at their home in Kempton Park, Gauteng, they’re preparing to celebrate her first birthday.

It’ll be a double celebration: for a while, it was touch and go whether Mari would make it too and she spent three months in hospital after giving birth, her life hanging in the balance.

Her husband, Johan (37), describes it as an absolute nightmare. “I’d go ice cold every time my phone rang because I knew it could be the hospital calling about Mari or Ruaché,” he says.

“I’m so grateful they’re both here.”

RUACHÉ is still tiny and wears clothes for a two- to three-month-old.