Parents and doctors celebrate the birth of a 1-pound baby released from the Long Beach hospital

LONG BEACH, Calif. (KABC) — Wednesday was a very special graduation day for a little survivor who overcame great adversity.

Baby Marz weighed just over a pound when she was born at 21 weeks. She was the youngest baby ever born at Miller Children & Long Beach Women’s Hospital.

Now, four and a half months later, after being cared for in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, she is heading home to her parents in Compton.

Her mother, Sherry Player-Tucker, said she remained optimistic after her daughter’s premature birth.

“The first week of our stay here, my husband and I went to the wall of the NICU – there is an end wall there – and I took a photo of that wall. And her very first picture that I hung, I made a collage and put her there.” I put a picture on the NICU wall, and I put “NICU graduate” and the date and the month , where I felt like she was going to get out of here, and I just held on to that.

The Long Beach hospital has one of the largest Level 4 intensive care units in the region.

“This baby’s survival is a modern miracle,” said Antoine Soliman of Miller. “We find that babies born extremely early do not all survive. But because of the specialized care we provide here at Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital and many advances in medical technology that we have been able to achieve.” Fortunately, we are seeing that the chances of survival for babies like Marz are improving every day. “

Her parents spent countless days and hours taking care of Marz and thinking only positive thoughts around her.

“It was really one of those things where I didn’t really have time to think about anything else, and even when I did, I looked at it from the perspective of understanding that she’s still here and so there’s a reason.” why she is here,” said her father, Jamar Tucker.

On Wednesday the time had finally come and Marz completed his studies.

Her parents and her NICU team celebrated as they moved the tassel on her graduation cap to the left to mark her official departure from the NICU.

She will now be inducted into the official NICU Hall of Fame at Miller Children’s & Long Beach Women’s Hospital.