INDIANAPOLIS — They were special moments - months in the making - for a family in Indianapolis Tuesday.
13News was there as Baby Giorgio, who was born 17 weeks early, got to leave the hospital and head home for the very first time.
It's a graduation we can all celebrate.
"We were waiting for this moment forever and we didn't think it was going to come, so being here is just a lot," said Estefania Alvarado, Giorgio's mother.
Giorgio was born via cesarean section at 23 weeks and five days. Doctors told his family he had a 20% chance to live, but his mother knew better.
"And when he was born, he cried. It sounded like a little cat. 'Meow, meow,'" she said. "But he cried, and I don't know, something in me, like a mother's instinct, told me that he was going to make it. I knew then."
Though the road was long, Alvarado said it was her faith, her partner and the staff at Peyton Manning Children's Hospital that kept her going.
"We have a lot of sad times, but then we have babies like Giorgio who overcome the odds," Giorgio's nurse practitioner said. "There are days that we'd go home and weren't sure if he was going to make it, and then we'd come back and watch him continue to grow and thrive."
So you understand why these tears are so happy.
"It was a long journey, but it's worth it because he's here now," said Alvarado. "I love him so much. He's our miracle baby."