It’s a question NICU parents spend so much time thinking about: When will my baby go home?

For the parents of the tiniest baby boy ever successfully treated, that time has thankfully come. After five months in a Japanese hospital, the world’s smallest preemie boy, born at 24 weeks gestation weighing just 9.45 ounces (just over half a pound), is now home with his parents.

He’s grown to weigh over 7 pounds and is eating well, the BBC reports.

Doctor Takeshi Arimitsu, who treated the little boy, told the BBC he wanted to show that “there is a possibility that babies will be able to leave the hospital in good health, even though they are born small.”

Indeed, this baby boy is giving parents hope. It’s something his own mother now has for the future, but at one time she didn’t know if her baby would make it because of his record-breaking low birth weight. “I am grateful that he has grown this big because, honestly, I wasn’t sure he could survive,” she told Reuters.

According to Tiniest Babies registry at the University of Iowa, the previous record holder was a baby boy born in Germany in 2009, weighing about 9.66 ounces. The world’s tiniest surviving girl (also from Germany) was born weighing 8.8 ounces in 2015.

These tiny babies are strong, and so are their parents.

Congrats on going home, little dude!

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