Mom Spent Hours a Day Holding Her Micropremie in the NICU. She ‘Couldn’t Believe It’ When She Learned He Could Go Home 

One mom is overjoyed to have her baby home and calls the feeling “amazing.”

Thelma Hernandez, 39, gave birth to her son Aaron on February 18 when she was just 22 weeks pregnant. At birth, Aaron weighed only 1 pound, 1 ounce.

After nearly five months at Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, Hernandez finally got the news she had been waiting for: she could bring Aaron home.

“It’s a blessing,” Hernandez said. She added that she expected Aaron to go home with oxygen and a feeding tube, but he didn’t need either.

Hernandez admitted that the long hospital stay was “really hard,” but she developed a routine to care for Aaron while he was in the NICU. Every day, she changed his diapers and held him, even when he was intubated and couldn’t eat. As he grew stronger, she could feed him during her visits.

She held Aaron for hours each day because she was told that holding him would help him feel loved and improve his health. When she wasn’t at the hospital, Hernandez was busy with her 13-year-old daughter’s school pick-ups and drop-offs.

When it was finally time to bring Aaron home, Hernandez was surprised. He had recently had surgery, and she expected him to need at least another month to recover. Instead, the doctors said he was doing great, eating well, and could even come off oxygen.

“I was in shock,” she recalled. “For a few days I couldn’t believe it.”

Sunrise Children’s Hospital celebrated Aaron’s departure with a graduation-themed party, a tradition for NICU babies leaving the hospital. Hernandez, her husband, and their daughter posed for photos with Aaron in a tiny cap and gown in front of a display showing how many days he had been in the NICU and his birth weight.

“It’s a really big achievement to bring him home after all these months,” Hernandez said proudly.

She expressed special thanks to the NICU team, including nurses who sometimes changed their shifts to be there for Aaron’s surgeries. “They treated Aaron like he was family,” she said. Some nurses even came in on their days off to celebrate Aaron’s big day.

Once home, Hernandez and her family spent the entire day with Aaron, amazed that he was finally home. Looking ahead, she hopes to take him to visit her mother in Mexico this fall.

“When you see such tiny babies, the first thing you wonder is how they’re going to survive,” she said. “They start growing, but there are many challenges.”

But Aaron has defied expectations. “He’s really strong,” Hernandez said. “He’s a real fighter.”