Grown-up preemie has healthy baby delivered by same doctor

The obstetrician who delivered Ganit Tzenner 28 years ago as a premature baby delivered her daughter this week in the same hospital.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
GanitTzennerAndBaby311 (photo credit: Carmel Medical Center)
GanitTzennerAndBaby311
(photo credit: Carmel Medical Center)
Ganit Tzenner, a 28-year-old woman who was born at a very low birth weight – just 500 grams – at Carmel Medical Center in Haifa gave birth this week to a healthy, 3.2-kilo baby girl.
The obstetrician who delivered the premature baby then by cesarean section – Dr. Ron Auslander – carried out the delivery of her daughter in his current post as chief of obstetrics and gynecology.
Auslander said that treating premature babies today was not what it had been nearly three decades earlier.
“Then, a 500-gram baby was in real danger, but today their survival rate is much higher,” he said.
At the time, he was a young obstetrician at the beginning of his career; since then, he has delivered tens of thousands of newborns.
He said he even remembered Tzenner’s birth: Using an ultrasound scan, he could see that the fetus was very small and at risk. Fearful it would not survive because its size did not suit the number of weeks of pregnancy, it was decided that a cesarean be done immediately to save her. She was only 28 centimeters long and looked like a little puppy, he said. “We didn’t know if she would survive.”
By the age of three months, she reached 1.6 kilos and was sent home.
“This was the closing of a circle for us,” said Tzenner. “I was born and saved at Carmel, and I’m happy to return here to give birth in my first home.”
She was also recognized by nurse Shula Shamir, who treated her and her mother, Bilha, when Tzenner was born. Shamir, who claims to remember the faces of all women who have given birth to premature babies in her department, said she recalled Bilha.
The new baby was named Lian, and Tzenner said she was sure her daughter would, when the time came, have a baby in Carmel as well.