A Florida couple is now the happiest as they are going to welcome their infant son home, who spent nearly four months in the hospital after he was born weighing just 1 lb.
Jessica and Christopher Hill’s son Finn James was born at 24 weeks on May 21, 2019. Doctors told the new parents he had a 50 percent chance of survival, they told Good Morning America.
The newborn spent four months of his life on a ventilator and under the eye of doctors, who put him under the knife to repair a hole in his heart and to correct an illness in his intestines.
He was referred from Lakeland Regional Medical Center to the NICU at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando on June 6, where he was under observation. Doctors finally gave Jessica and Christopher the okay to take him home on Sept. 10, according to GMA.
“It didn’t hit me until we left and it was the three of us for the first time,” Jessica said. “I knew we wouldn’t have to take him back. It was everything we hoped and prayed for.”
The couple waited for a long time to have the baby, who had struggled with infertility and failed IVF cycles for nine years.
They adopt eight embryos from a couple Jessica met on Facebook, and after one unsuccessful pregnancy, she became pregnant with twins.
“They have given us the gift of life,” Christopher told Bay News 9 of the couple, who they now consider close friends. “That’s the biggest thing you can give someone, is the gift of life.”
One of the twins died at 10 weeks, and just 14 weeks later, Finn was born after a blood clot made Jessica’s water break.
“Initially, it was just shocking. I started crying and asking my doctor, ‘What are his chances of survival if you take him out now?’ ” she recalled to GMA. “The doctor said he was safer on the outside than he was inside.”
Finn was born via emergency cesarean section, nearly four months before his Sept. 6 due date.
Jessica holds her son for the first time on June 30, a moment she called “unbelievable” after watching him from afar for more than a month.
“When his entire hand fits around your fingernail, it makes you realize just how precious life is,” she told local ABC affiliate WFTS.
Finn’s parents call him a happy baby because he always wears a smile. Finn is now 4 months old and weighs 5 lbs., 5 oz.
Jessica and Christopher have been tracking their son’s progress on the Facebook page Fighting Finn.
“We are working hard to make sure his glucose levels don’t drop and he eats enough to gain weight…. It’s a bit of a battle, but we are hopefully getting there. We would hate for this peanut to be re-admitted,” the most recent update reads.
The couple told Bay News 9 that they hope to give Finn a sibling using the remaining embryos from the couple Jessica met on Facebook.
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