HIGH POINT, N.C. -- Look at your hand, then imagine a baby so small it doesn't even fill your entire palm. A Triad baby was born that tiny; a micro-preemie as he's called and one of the smallest to survive in North Carolina.
Mom Rodericka Moore loves to hear her son Amari make noise. His small, tiny cries are far better than the monitor beeps that kept him alive in the NIC-U at Forsyth Medical Center.
"At first I hear a beep and I see the tubes and I'm like, no, not my baby," Moore told WFMY News 2's Tracey McCain.
Amari was in neonatal intensive care for 120 days. A lifetime for any mom forced to bond with their newborn through the glass. Less than a pound at birth in February, Amari was the size of a smartphone.
Amari was born at 24 weeks, weighing just 15 ounces. His chances of making it through the first 24 hours were slim.
"I was like, you're going to make it because God wouldn't do that to me."
Rodericka never doubted, even when doctors weren't so sure.
"They never said he was going to be okay. There were like, we have to prepare you for the worst," she said. Complications with preeclampsia forced the mom of two to deliver four months early.
"They had to take him, in order to save me." News, no mother ever wants to hear. But now, they're both doing great and Amari is hope.
"I didn't think a 15 ounce baby had hope. I didn't think a 15 ounce baby could be normal, could come home on no oxygen and no feeding tubes," said the teary-eyed mom.
At eight-months-old, Amari has already lived through four hernia surgeries and two bouts of pneumonia. It's no wonder Rodericka calls him her miracle baby.
