When KEMH specialists first suggested using coconut oil to treat the fragile skin of Kimberly Rohrlach’s extremely premature first-born child, Isabella, she thought it was more than a little weird.
“At the time, though, if anything was going to help I was willing to give it a go, so I just said yes,” Kimberly said. “I knew they wouldn’t trial it on kids unless they had had pretty positive outcomes so far.”
At that stage Isabella weighed little more than a can of Coke, having been born a frightening 23 weeks and one day into Kimberly’s pregnancy. Just two days earlier, and she would not have been revived.
“I still get goose bumps when I think about it,” Kimberly said. “Without everything that happened, I wouldn’t have had my daughter. She’s only here because of the science and willingness of doctors around me.”
One of those doctors was neonatologist Professor Tobias Strunk, who was piloting an ancient treatment – coconut oil applied to newborn skin – in the hopes it would protect the skin of extremely premature babies enough to fight off bacteria like sepsis, one of the most common complications for babies born too early.
“During pregnancy the skin is made to support babies for life inside the womb, not outside, so when they are born really prematurely the skin is under-developed and quickly starts to deteriorate,” Professor Strunk said. “It’s how bacteria gets inside the body – often causing disability or even death.”
