INDIANAPOLIS -- In the neonatal intensive care unit at Riley Hospital for Children, Nevaeh King clings to life. Nevaeh, which is heaven spelled backward, is the tiniest baby to undergo open heart surgery at the hospital.

"She's my little miracle child because I didn't think she was going to make it at all. I really didn't," said Sarah Fuller, the baby's mother.

Fuller's daughter was 10 weeks premature. She was diagnosed with total anomalous pulmonary venous return, a rare heart condition that turned her blue.

TAPVR accounts for less than 1 percent of all congenital heart defects.

Dr. John Brown with Riley Hospital for Children told 6News Staying Healthy reporter Stacia Matthews the defect is fatal if left untreated.

"The vessels that drain blood back from the lungs to the heart were not connected to the heart in a normal fashion," Brown said. "Blood was backing up in the baby's lungs and it was just a matter of time until she couldn't survive."

To correct the problem, Brown and his team of surgeons would have to reroute a cluster of vessels, which had detoured around the baby's liver.

But the baby weighed less than 3 pounds.

Brown tried to buy time to allow Nevaeh to grow, but when her lungs began to fail, he went for broke.

To give the preemie a fighting chance, Brown put the infant in deep hypothermia to cool her body to about 70 degrees.

Then he placed her in circulatory arrest and broke her tiny rib cage to reach her heart.

The Anderson infant was so small, there wasn't room for some tubes usually used during open heart surgery.

It took nearly eight hours to mend her broken heart.

"Her heart is fixed. All connections are where they need to be. And they will grow as the baby grows," the surgeon said.

The baby's body needs to fully develop before she can go home, but the prayers of Navaeh's father were answered.

"She's a fighter, yeah, she's a real fighter. She's out to win this one," said the father, Roderick King.

"I haven't had a chance to hold her yet, but it will be nice if I can hold her up to my chest, like a mother," Fuller said.