Jacob was born in April 2018.  When he was born he was immediately flown to Arkansas Children’s Hospital.   He had multiple life threatening issues but the most threatening was kidney failure and pneumothorax.  He was given less than a 5% chance of surviving.  He was admitted into the NICU and was placed on a ventilator, feeding tube, chest tubes and other machines to help him survive.  

Due to unfortunate circumstances, Jacob was placed in foster care.   His birth mom and dad asked if Chris and I would take care of Jacob and of course we wanted him.   We had already become mom and dad to his biological brother who we had since he was 7 weeks old.  No matter what the diagnosis, prognosis or long term care looked like, we wanted him.   We wanted the boys to be raised as brothers and we wanted both together forever with us.  

On May 18th we finally got to meet Baby Jacob.   We had to go through the process of a long and eye opening meeting with doctors, nurses, dieticians and social workers.   They needed to make sure that we were capable and also that we understood that Baby Jacob’s life would forever be different than anything we knew.   I was extremely nervous but knew this was a piece of my life puzzle that God had pieced together so perfectly.   

After our meeting, they took us to Baby Jacob’s private room where he had spent many days with just his doctors and the best team of primary nurses that this momma could have ever put together for him.   Our “Momma Audra”, “Sister Lauren”, and Katie were the best of the best.   They were truly amazing and loved my Jacob and their Jacob as if he were their own.  These were the ladies who would become our family.   They would call me and keep me up to date while I was at work and they would cry with me on days when that room got a little overwhelming.  None of them ever gave up on my boy either.  Our sweet Katie was the one who got to introduce us to our Baby Jacob.   I remember how I had no idea what I was going to do with all of those tubes and machines but I knew we would figure it out.   Katie was so patient and did an amazing job at answering all of my questions.   I just stood and stared at this tiny miracle knowing my God was going to walk every step of this journey with us.