MAYWOOD, Sep 20 : A baby born weighing less than a soda can has celebrated her first birthday. Rumaisa Rahman, whose parents are from India, is believed to be the smallest baby ever to survive.

With a birth weight of just 244 grams, The Guinness Book of Records lists her as the world’s lightest birth.

Rumaisa and her non-identical twin sister, Hiba, were delivered by Caesarean section 14 weeks early after their mother developed pre-eclampsia, involving dangerously high blood pressure.

Loyola University Medical Center, the Chicago hospital where Rumaisa received treatment until she was discharged in February, hosted a party for the two girls on their birthday on Monday.

Rumaisa, who was only 25.4 centimetres long at birth, now weighs 5.9 kilograms and is 60 centimetres tall. Rumaisa’s sister, Hiba, weighed only 567 grams at birth, but was discharged from the hospital a month before her sister. She now weighs 7.7 kilograms.

Full-term, one-year-old babies usually weigh around nine kilograms.

The twins were the first children for Mohammed Abdul Rahman and Mahajabeen Shaikh, who are originally from Hyderabad, India, and now live in Illinois.

Doctors said both girls are doing well. The girls’ father said doctors have told him the twins could be on the small side as adults but that only time would tell. If you have faith in God, everything is going to be OK, he said. —AFP