And if Kimber did live, she would likely face physical and learning disabilities as she grew up.

Did they want doctors to do everything possible to save her? The couple signed the consent form without hesitation.

"Once you sign that paper, you [feel like you] can't go back unless the baby's in pain," recalls Brian, 39.

A few days after Kimber's birth, doctors rushed his wife to the emergency room. She had fainted from too much blood loss during the delivery. One floor up, Kimber was crashing. A hole in one of her heart valves was filling a lung with fluid.

When Debbie regained consciousness, she insisted on being wheeled in to see her. The infant was struggling to breathe.

"When you see people with watery eyes 'bagging' your little girl, you know something is very, very wrong. The tone in that room, it was just a silence that rang through me."

Kimber was in pain.

The couple agonized over whether to hang on, or let the baby they had awaited for so long die in peace.

They told doctors to keep Kimber alive until her grandparents, aunts and uncles could drive down from Idaho the next day. Debbie and Brian picked out a lovely white burial gown and discussed where they would hold the funeral.

And then, improvement.

Kimber's breathing and heart rate stabilized enough for a surgeon to try to repair the hole in her heart valve - an operation he had planned to do before she crashed.

After accepting their daughter's death, Brian and Debbie struggled to leap back into survival mode. But Kimber responded immediately after the valve was clamped. She was still a tiny 1 pound 1 ounce, about a dollar bill long from shoulder to toes, but she had turned an important corner.

Kimber was the eldest baby in the hospital's Newborn Intensive Care Unit until she left - finally - on Thursday. She is three weeks beyond her original due date and weighs a chubby 6 pounds 11 ounces.

A week ago, she underwent her fifth surgery, this one to scrape away scars pulling on her left retina. She underwent the same operation on her right eye weeks ago.

She has hit every other preemie milestone - gaining weight, learning to breathe without a respirator, learning to eat from a nipple. Her eyes were the only thing keeping her in the hospital.

Surgeon Michael Teske says the success rate for repairing partially detached retinas is almost 90 percent. Kimber's peripheral vision may suffer and she may need glasses, but she likely won't be blind.

Brian and Debbie know it's just the beginning, and they've learned not to think too far ahead.

Caressing her chest after the surgery, they couldn't help but wonder, wouldn't a Valentine's Day homecoming be nice?

But in what seems to be a pattern, Kimber made even that wish come true a little early.