A baby born at only 24 weeks and weighing less than 1 pound, 3 ounces is finally home after spending 113 days in the NICU.
The remarkable story of tiny Finn Hill starts well before his own birth or even conception, when his parents, Jessica and Chris Hill, adopted several embryos after struggling with infertility for nearly a decade. Following several rounds of unsuccessful in vitro treatments with their own sperm and egg, the Florida couple decided to adopt embryos from another couple.
On round two of this new in vitro process, Hill became pregnant with twins. Sadly, she lost one at only nine weeks pregnant, but Finn hung in there.
That is, until a blood clot and detaching placenta caused Hill’s water to break at only 24 weeks – when Finn was just barely on the edge of being able to survive outside the womb.
After performing an emergency c-section, doctors delivered “Fighting Finn” on May 21, nearly four months before his due date. Several weeks later he was transferred to the NICU at Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando, where he remained for nearly 100 more days. There, he battled his way through a host of complications common in preemies so small, including one surgery to repair a hole in his heart and another to fix an issue with his intestines.
But even stuck on a ventilator, Finn continued to improve and grow.
On Sept. 10, four months after he was born, the Hills were able to take their son home – this time, weighing 5 pounds, 5 ounces. Check out their story: