Mikey is a little boy who only ever dreamed of being one thing: a big brother. His mother Jessica wrote on social media that from the time that Mikey could talk, he was asking for a baby brother.

Jessica and her husband Mike started trying for a second baby when Mikey was three, but months went by and they could not get pregnant. After trying for a year, they went to a fertility specialist, and Jessica even had surgery in the hopes of improving her odds. During that time, Mikey never stopped begging for a little brother.

Finally, Jessica learned she was pregnant on Mikey’s fifth birthday, and it was by far the best birthday present the boy had ever received!

Sadly, an ultrasound at 11 weeks showed that they had lost the baby. The unborn child had trisomy 13, a condition that would have been fatal to the infant had he been born. Making things even more tragic was that the nurse informed the family that the baby had been a boy.

“It took my breath away. Mikey had gotten his baby brother, except now he was our angel baby,” Jessica recalled.

Jessica and her husband decided after this that they could not go through the pain again and would stop trying to conceive.

“After that, every time Mikey asked for his baby brother, we would explain to him that there may be a chance that he may never get a baby brother. It broke our hearts to say these words to him, but we found a way to settle into a life just the three of us in our new home and enjoy our summer,” Jessica explained.

On Mikey’s first day of kindergarten, however, Jessica sensed a change in her body.

“I knew something was off, but I did not want to get too excited,” she said. “I waited until the weekend and I had my husband pick up a pregnancy test. I took the test and waited in the bathroom alone for the result. My husband could hardly believe it and made me take two more tests just to be sure. We were excited but cautious.”

Jessica was terrified something would go wrong as her pregnancy went on, but tests showed that the baby was at low risk for trisomy 13. Ultrasounds also showed that the baby was a boy!

All was going well until 18-week checkup when the baby measured small. At 23 weeks, Jessica was told that the baby was no longer growing and that she could terminate the pregnancy, but she refused to give up on the child.

Jessica was admitted to the hospital for observation in the hopes that she could make it to 28 weeks gestation.

“During my one month in antepartum, the baby gave us three scares that he was going to arrive, but we made it to 30 weeks and 6 days,” Jessica said. “I had a growth ultrasound that day and the baby had only gained two grams in two weeks. The doctor told us, ‘we are going to have a baby today,’ and explained that if we waited any longer we would risk a stillborn.”

Finally, Jessica had emergency surgery, and Jake Eric was delivered weighing one pound, 12 ounces, and measured only 12 inches long.

“Once I recovered a bit, I was wheeled on my stretcher to see him and his smallness took my breath away and my eyes filled with tears,” Jessica recounted. “That night my in-laws brought Mikey to see me and we told him he finally had his baby brother, Jake. The first time Mikey saw him, he beamed and said, ‘He has red hair just like me!’”

Jake was immediately rushed to the NICU, and Jessica prayed that he would make it.

“As a NICU mom, I feel like you go into autopilot and go through the motions without the emotion as much as possible because it is the only way to survive,” she continued. “Living the NICU life was the hardest thing we have ever gone through together. Jake was hooked up to so many wires and tubes and lived in an isolette. We had to leave him alone except for his care times every three hours when you would assist the nurse in diaper changing and taking the temperature. As a NICU mom you get used to all the beeping and alarms.”

“At three weeks, we had quite the scare and Jake was really struggling to breath and was just fighting a lot more than he had been,” she said. “After a meeting with the nurse practitioner, we decided he would benefit from a blood transfusion to get red blood cells which would allow him to produce more oxygen. Jake was fed via a feeding tube until he was about seven weeks.”

The highlight of this time for the family came at the moments they could bond with him skin-to-skin. Mikey desperately wanted to hold the brother he’d dreamed of, but he couldn’t just yet.

“He wanted more than anything to hold his baby brother,” Jessica said. “Mikey was filled with sadness that he could not hold his baby brother. During one of my daily rounds with Jake’s nurses and doctors on day 10, I asked if Mikey could do skin-to-skin with his baby brother, fully expecting them to say no. I was beyond thrilled when they agreed!”

Jessica described the moment Mikey held Jake as “amazing and emotional.”

“I truly believe it became the foundation for their brotherly bond. Jake spent 62 days in the NICU and his homecoming was one of the happiest days of our lives,” she said. “Mikey is an amazing big brother and having Jake has brought a calmness to Mikey’s life, and Mikey has a way of calming Jake when he is upset.”

The boys now snuggle together in their mother’s bed every morning!

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