“It feels surreal,” Nash’s mom, Mollie Keen, told Guinness (GWR), speaking about her son’s whirlwind first 12 months. “A year ago, we weren’t sure what the future would look like, and now we’ve celebrated his first birthday.”
Gathering with family and close friends, the Keens celebrated at their home in Ankeny, Iowa, and Nash received dozens of outfits and piles of diapers. But for the now-thriving one-year-old, home was a foreign place during the first six months of his life, which he spent in a hospital over a hundred miles away.
Born at 21 weeks of gestation—a full 133 days before his due date—Nash weighed under 10 ounces when he was delivered at Stead Family Children’s Hospital at the University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC) in Iowa City. For the first month, he clung to life by a thread.
Immediately after his birth, doctors rushed Nash to the hospital’s level IV neonatal intensive care unit and connected him to the very smallest lifesaving equipment they had. It was almost too large for his tiny veins and mouth.
Doctors were candid with the Keens about Nash’s chances of survival, saying they were technically non-existent. Surrounded by machines and monitors, with doctors all around, was an “emotionally overwhelming” experience, Mollie told GWR, but “there was this tiny spark of strength in [Nash] that gave us hope.”
Nash’s father, Randall Keens, credits the doctors’ tireless efforts for giving his son a fighting chance, answering his heart machine’s every beep. But Nash’s mom says his resilience was also unstoppable. Soon, he rebounded. “Around the one-month mark, we all began to breathe a little easier,” she told IHC.
For Mollie, the most significant milestone was being able to hold her son for the first time. Covered in wires and monitors, he was so small she could barely feel him on her chest. She was nervous, “but the moment he was placed on my chest, all my nerves disappeared,” she said. “It felt like pure relief and love all at once.”
Even after Nash increased in size, stabilizing and growing ever stronger, he continued undergoing constant blood draws and echocardiograms for the heart condition his doctors said he might live with. The Keens, meanwhile, showered Nash with love. After six months, in January 2025, Nash was cleared to finally head home.
But he wasn’t entirely out of the woods.
Today, although Nash’s mom says he rarely cries, he still receives oxygen through his nose and uses a feeding tube. He laughs hearing the animal sounds his toys make with the help of a hearing aid. Both hearing loss and heart issues were both complications of his birth. He attends a specialized daycare and has regular checkups, and therapies.
“He’s been through a lot, but Nash is the kind of kid that just is so chill,” Mollie told GWR. “He loves watching the other little kids play and run around in front of him, and, yeah, he’s just a happy kid.”
Early Arrival
The life Nash now leads has another silver lining for the family: he’s a rainbow baby. Less than a year before Nash was born, the Keens had lost a pregnancy, a baby girl named McKinley, at just 18 weeks gestation. Mollie was diagnosed with an incompetent cervix, causing a weak uterus that opens prematurely during pregnancy. She also suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome, which can make getting pregnant difficult.Once Nash was conceived, the Keens were terrified when doctors said the same condition was causing her to dilate prematurely. “It was 2 a.m. on a Tuesday when I started contracting really heavily,” Mollie told IHC. “We rushed to Iowa City. We checked in.”
On July 5, just hours after Nash’s 21-week mark, Mollie felt “a bit off,” she says, and a medical team rushed into her room. She delivered Nash not a day too soon for him to become the world’s most premature baby. His survival is, in part, due to what today is a new frontier in maternal fetal medicine, according to Dr. Malinda Schaefer, the high-risk obstetrician who delivered Nash.
Thankfully, Nash “just came out easily,” Dr. Schaefer said, adding that he was “head down,” so a C-section wasn’t necessary. “We were able to deliver in the bed as much as possible, and that was yet another advantage for Nash.” Once he was out, they focused on managing hemorrhaging.
A year and one month on, Nash was visited by Guinness. He had surpassed the previous record-holder for youngest preemie, Curtis Zy-Keith Means, who was born at 21 weeks and 1 day of gestation on July 5, 2020 (sharing Nash’s birthday). But Nash also surpassed the most premature quadruplets—Lainey, Kali, Lennon, and Koen, born to the Bryant family—who were born at 23 weeks, 4 days, gestation on May 31, 2024. That record had stood for nearly three decades.
