She's only bigger than the 'Thumbelina'.....
A premature baby girl came into the world so early that she weighed just about 13oz with the size of a can of drink. But she managed to survive and grow stronger and she is even able to come home before Christmas!
JSchneider Photography
JSchneider Photography
This Christmas miracle happens in a family in the Missouri State of USA.
'I did not think that a human being could be so tiny,' recalled the mom of the miracle baby Robin. 'She weighed a little less than a can of soda and to be honest, it was scary to look at her.'
Baby Ellie wasn't supposed to be born until November 1, 2017. Robin thought she had a perfect pregnancy until her first routine ultrasound scan at 18 weeks pregnancy.
JSchneider Photography
The midwife saw that Robin's cervix was shortened which was unusual. 'This meant that I could have gone into labor at any second which would have been terrible because the doctors couldn't have helped her and she wouldn't have survived.'
JSchneider Photography
Finally, the Doctors put a small ring-shaped device into Robin's cervix, trying to prevent premature labor. Ellie was born at 21 weeks and six days in mid-June this year, weighing just 13.6oz and measuring 10.4 inches long.
JSchneider Photography
Ellie had to stay in the NICU unit since she was born but she made it before Christmas! 'It's such a dream come true to have her home for Christmas,' said Robin, 'We kept praying for this as she grew stronger in the hospital.'
JSchneider Photography
'Christmas is such a special time of the year. It's all about a baby and his birth and we are so fortunate that we have our own baby girl home to celebrate the season with.'
'It truly is a Christmas miracle.'
JSchneider Photography
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — As rescuers dug through the remains of a collapsed apartment building in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday, they could hear the cries of a baby from underneath the rubble.
Suddenly, calls of “God is great” rang out. A man sprinted away from the wreckage carrying a living infant swaddled in a blanket and handed her to a waiting ambulance crew. The baby girl stirred fitfully as paramedics checked her over.
Her parents and brother were dead in the overnight Israeli airstrike.
“When we asked people, they said she is a month old and she has been under the rubble, since dawn,” said Hazen Attar, a civil defense first responder. “She had been screaming and then falling silent from time to time until we were able to get her out a short while ago, and thank God she is safe.”
The girl was identified as Ella Osama Abu Dagga. She had been born 25 days earlier, in the midst of a tenuous ceasefire that many Palestinians in Gaza had hoped would mark the end of a war that has devastated the enclave, killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly its entire population.
Only the girl's grandparents survived the attack. Killed were her brother, mother and father, along with another family that included a father and his seven children. Rescuers digging through the rubble could be seen pulling out the small body of a child sprawled on the mattress where he had been sleeping.
The girl's grandmother, Fatima Abu Dagga, sat with a group of other women in a relative's house Thursday, taking turns cradling the infant. Her sons and their wives and eight grandchildren died in the bombing, and only the baby survived. She wept over the loss, and the return to the devastation of war.
“We weren’t really living in a truce," she said. "We knew that at any moment the war might return. We never felt that there was stability, not at all.”
Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages. Israel blamed the renewed fighting on Hamas because the militant group rejected a new proposal for the second phase of the ceasefire that departed from their signed agreement, which was mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including more than 400 on Tuesday alone, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Health officials said most of the victims were women and children.
The strike that destroyed the infant girl’s home hit Abasan al-Kabira, a village just outside of Khan Younis near the border with Israel, killing at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead.
It was inside an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
Nabil Abu Dagga, a relative of Ella's family who lives nearby, rushed to the scene of the strike.
“People were sitting together and enjoying themselves on a Ramadan night, staying up together as a family,” he said. “... No one was expecting it and no one would imagine that a human could kill another human in this way.”
He and others started pulling out bodies. Then they heard the baby girl's cries.
The Israel military says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it is deeply embedded in residential areas. The military did not immediately comment on the overnight strikes.
Hours later, the Israeli military restored a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, that it had maintained for most of the war, but which had been lifted under the ceasefire deal.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to what remains of their homes in the north after a ceasefire took hold in January.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.
Israel’s blistering retaliatory air and ground offensive has killed nearly 49,000 Palestinians since then, more than half of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not say how many were militants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
————
Associated Press staff writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, is held by her great-aunt Suad Abu Dagga after she was pulled from the rubble earlier following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana )
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, is held by her great-aunt Suad Abu Dagga after she was pulled from the rubble earlier following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana )
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, is held by her great-aunt Suad Abu Dagga after she was pulled from the rubble earlier following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana )
Volunteers and rescue workers use a bulldozer as to remove the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli army airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
A volunteer attempts to pull the body of a man from the rubble following an Israeli army airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT.- Rescue workers and volunteers attempt to pull the body of a man from the rubble following an Israeli army airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT.- Rescue workers and volunteers attempt to pull the body of a man from the rubble following an Israeli army airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, lies in a van after being pulled from the rubble following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
