Our Miracle, Milo James

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 points where I almost passed out, and I needed a lot of intervention. Thankfully this morning, my hemoglobin isn't low enough to need a transfusion, but we are still monitoring my bleeding very closely and I'm hooked up to a Jada Device which is a tool to stop hemorrhaging. 

I want to take a moment to shed some light on Josh and the strength he has shown through all of this. He had two urgent medical situations going on, both with Milo, and myself and he somehow managed to show up for both of us when we needed him. 

Throughout the night, I had multiple interventions to try to stop the hemorrhaging so I didn't get a great night's sleep. Being in the hospital room has been particularly emotional because Milo isn't in our room with us, and it feels very surreal that we had a baby last night. Thankfully, despite the emotional rollercoaster it's been, I think Josh and I are handling it as best as we can!

This morning has been a bit more mellow. My bleeding has slowed, and we had a nurse help me get some portable suction for my machines so we could go see Milo! Once he left the room last night at 10:40, I was not able to see him until this trip around 8am this morning. We had lots of things to bring with me, but we got to see our boy! It's an emotional whirlwind seeing your baby hooked up to all the machines, but also I was just so grateful to see him alive. This is something we didn't know would happen 17 weeks ago when we started getting these diagnoses. 

Milo is currently stabilized, but has put the doctors to work a couple times, and thrown a wrench in the plans. However, the neonatologist we spoke with this morning is hoping to reach out to hospitals to see if there are any willing to take on Milo's case. He just had an echocardiogram done to evaluate his heart function, and will have an ultrasound on his kidneys as well. The other positive thing is that he went from 100% oxygen, down to 60% oxygen. They repositioned him which seems to have helped his breathing. We tried to snap some pictures of our unique little love. You'll see two of our newest findings are his extra fingers and the Aplasia Cutis Congenita (the absence of skin on the back of his head). With all these things, he continues to show us how strong he is, and how much he wants to be here. 

This is one of the hardest things we have ever had to face. We thank each and every one of you so much for your love and support as we fight for Milo.