Our Miracle, Milo

I recently read a quote that said, "It takes a village to raise a child, but no one talks about the village it takes to grieve a child."  Today, Josh and I, along with our families, were blown away by the village who helped us celebrate the life, and mourn the loss of our sweet Milo James.  While today was our goodbye to our boy, there was also so much love and celebration over his impact in the world. His story has created ripples in so many ways. I know that in the future, we will continue to spread ripples in his honor, and we hope that you will too.  We are eternally grateful for Shuda Funeral Home for assisting us with Milo's memorial and Pastor Jane Johnson for providing a beautiful service.  We ended our day with a gathering with our daycare for pizza in the park. This is always a fun way to build community, and we look forward to it every month. Tonight was extra special though because we walked back to the center to plant some seeds in a special garden plant...

  Milo James, One week ago today, to the minute I'm typing this, you were working your way into this world. The doctor had just broken your water, and labor immediately got more intense. Within one hour, you'd be earthside, after 37 weeks of being a part of me.  I keep replaying the moment you were here, and all I keep thinking is how I said, "We did it, Buddy." I am so, so proud of you. You fought through so many obstacles to make it earthside and I keep looking through the pictures of your first moments, where it shows just how hard you fought.  Now, it's my turn to fight and push forward. This week has been the hardest week of my life. There's been so many moments where I've said, "You should be here." There's been many tears that hit randomly. They've ranged from watching your dad play with your siblings to seeing a book on the shelf at Walmart. My heart so badly wants you here and aches knowing that in two days, we will lay you to re...

My last post was made on June 19th, around 11:15am. Shortly after that, Milo started to have more and more difficultly with remaining stable. The NICU team was able to stabilize him each time, but he was needing more and more support. I keep replaying our nurse coming in, and saying we needed to get upstairs and seeing the crash cart outside his room. At this point we had two of the neonatologists in our room, Milo's nurse, respiratory therapist, and more in his room. The neonatologists explained that Milo's body was more complex that we initially believed. He had many "midline" defects that we didn't know of until his systems started working on his own. From the beginning, Josh and I agreed that Milo would let us know what he needed and we would do just that. Seeing these complexities was his way of telling us he was just too pure for this world.  We went back downstairs and started making plans to get Ryleigh and Oliver up to the hospital, along with our photogr...

Milo James Reinke was born yesterday, June 18th, 2025 at 10:15pm. He is 7lbs 15oz and 19" long! With some help from the birth team, we got to hear some sweet squeaks/cries, and he worked hard to try to breathe on his own. We are so beyond amazed at the strength of our perfect little boy. Photo Credit: Chelsea May Photography Milo's birth was pretty fast and furious (similar to his brother's). About 20 minutes after he was born, they intubated him, and he was moved up to the NICU, where Josh joined him while I was recovering. Last night, they also added an umbilical line to help give him fluids/medications. Josh was asked to come up to the NICU again later in the evening to get an update as well where we learned they had him on 100% oxygen and at that point he was getting everything he possibly could.  After this update, my health took a drastic decline. I ended up hemorrhaging due to large clots that were not letting my body do what it needed to. There were some scary poin...

Our weekly bumpdate from yesterday! This past week has brought lots of emotions. We were so blessed my best friend, Faith came up for the weekend and helped us prep some meals for Milo's arrival. It was also nice to just have some quality time with some of our chosen family.  Monday, we decided we NEEDED to pack our hospital bag. I realized as we got started, that apparently I was avoiding this task. I had some big breakdowns realizing, what do you pack for a baby that you may or may not get to bring home? What do you pack for an extended hospital stay? The tears were heavy but we got it done, with multiple outfit choices packed for sweet Milo when he arrives! Which leads me to the next thing...  Yesterday, I was feeling quite awful, and my home blood pressure cuff was reading all over th e board. We thought we were going to have to head in to the hospital, but my BP leveled out and we were able to stay home another night...  Today, we had our scheduled appointment with M...

I've officially hit the "I'm uncomfortable, and not a peppy pregnant lady." stage of this pregnancy. I'm swelling, Milo has bruised my insides, and reflux has hit SO hard this week (thankfully omeprazole is helping!). I'm constantly needing help with things like putting dishes away, or getting up, etc.  Of course, there's a flip side to these feelings. I do feel guilty even mentioning the aches/pains because many T13 pregnancies do not get this far, and I should feel more gratitude that we are as far as we are. I feel like many of these feelings are so complex because of the constant reminders that there's still so much to be grateful for, but also, acknowledging the last weeks of pregnancy are SO hard, regardless of the prenatal diagnosis. Last weekend, I found a survival study on T13 babies in the Cincinnati area and found that Milo has some good things going for him such as his gestation length, and his size. There was correlation between the longer...

Yesterday, we had an appointment with our regular OB and a doctor from the NICU. It's been nearly 14 weeks since we learned of Milo's diagnosis, and yesterday was the FIRST time I have nearly cried happy tears in an appointment.  We had our NST, which of course, Milo did fantastic. His heart had the proper variations and he moved around a bunch. We met with our doctor and confirmed more plans for monitoring and delivery. We also talked about my swelling, which isn't super concerning yet, as my BP is still good.  After that, we met with a doctor from the NICU, and I was absolutely BLOWN away. The neonatologist came in and shared how he's read through all of our notes, expressed how he's sorry we've faced what we have. Then, in one statement, he validated everything we have felt on this journey so far. He went on to say how it's so conflicting where these hospitals, doctors, publications, etc. say that children with Trisomy 13 will not have a good prognosis or...

Last week Friday, my coworkers threw the sweetest shower for our little Milo. Truthfully, I lack the words to describe the gratitude and happiness I felt as we celebrated. Nothing about this pregnancy has been "normal" and I've spent a lot of time worrying instead of being fully immersed in the moment. What my coworkers did allowed me the opportunity to celebrate this miraculous little boy that I've been growing for these past 35 weeks. It is truly such an act of kindness that I will NEVER forget.  Now that we've reached 35 weeks, we know that it will be 4 weeks or less until he's here. I'm really hoping that he will decide when to grace us with his presence, but we also understand an induction will allow for all of our medical teams to be prepared. Last week, I started having immense anxiety with the idea of having an emergency c-section if Milo would show distress, but talking to my OB, and other people in my circle have helped reassure me that it's ...