By James Kelley (Radio Iowa)

An Iowa baby now holds the Guinness World Record for the most premature baby.

Nash Keen was born last year at just 21 weeks — so early that most hospitals couldn’t deliver him, but doctors at University of Iowa Health Care resituated the baby at birth and supported him using advanced ultrasound technology to measure the blood supply to his heart and lungs.

“We don’t really know…We don’t have any research on babies this young and so we just held on to hope,” said Mollie Keen, Nash’s mother. “That was kind of what we did for the first month until Nash started to show us that he was really fighting.”

In the beginning, doctors told the family the baby boy had a zero percent chance of survival. Dr. Patrick McNamara, the UIHC’s director of neonatology, said this case opens a new frontier in his field.

“Nash is resilient,” he said. “What we have learned, and not just necessarily with Nash, is that survival is possible at 21 weeks gestation, but not just survival — meaningful survival.”

Nash, who lives with his parents in Ankeny, turned one on July 5. He was born at 21 weeks and weighed 10 ounces. The previous Guinness World Record for most premature baby was a boy born in Alabama five years ago — at 21 weeks and one day.