This is a message to my family to keep the faith, faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains...

Sonja Taylor

By Renee Roberson

On October 24, 2007, a miracle baby named Amillia Taylor turned 1 year old in Miami, Fla. The daughter of Sonja and Eddie Taylor, Amillia was born at 21 weeks weighing just a little over 9 ounces, and is the first baby known to survive after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks.

The Taylors' story begins with a struggle many couples face when trying to start a family – infertility. They conceived Amillia through in vitro fertilization, and there were complications from the beginning. Sonja Taylor was put on bed rest early on in the pregnancy, and was finally released after about four months. "After about two weeks I got dehydrated and went into premature labor," says Sonja Taylor. "I was put back on bed rest but lost my mucous plug." Taylor and her husband immediately headed to Baptist Children's Hospital in Kendall, Fla. The staff there sent her to get an ultrasound and told her they would have to deliver the baby as soon as possible. But Taylor's maternal instinct kicked in, and deep in her heart, she knew her baby would die if it were delivered at 18 weeks."I put my foot down and said, 'You are not delivering this baby right now,'" Taylor says. Although she was leaking amniotic fluid and was already dilated, Taylor refused to let her doctor deliver the baby. She stayed in the hospital, with her mother and husband keeping a constant vigil over here. When she started spiking a fever almost a week later, the doctors knew they had to act soon. They gave Taylor steroids to help develop the baby's lungs and prepared for an emergency C-section. "I was septic, and my uterus and cervix were both infected," Taylor says. "When they took her out, the whole room gasped. They were shocked because she was so small. She had one eye opened and was looking around."

Amillia Taylor was born weighing 9 ounces and measuring 9 1/2 inches long (about the length of an ink pen). Taylor says the neonatologist on staff didn't know what to do with Amillia because he had never seen a baby so small. She had one nurse assigned just to her.