For nine relentless months, my wife Brooklyn carried our baby boy with unwavering courage, curled between elation and dread. What began as a moment of pure joy gradually became the hardest journey our family has ever known.
About mid-pregnancy—three or four months in—the words “severe hydrocephalus” shattered our quiet hopes. The scans painted a bleak picture: too much fluid in the brain, much like the old-fashioned term “water on the brain.” That phrase, I realized, carries both clinical weight and heartbreaking undertones I had never fully understood until then.
We were referred to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, a place that stands among the nation’s foremost fetal-care centers. We met specialists—bright, serious, compassionate—who delivered a prognosis so dire they eventually stopped measuring the swelling in our son’s brain. His MRI images, for us, became impossible to look at without feeling suffocated by sorrow.
The diagnosis: a more than 90% chance that our baby boy would not survive beyond birth, or, if he did, would face profound neurological deficits that undermined any promise of meaningful life. It was overwhelming; the doctors brought in palliative care, not as a plan for healing, but as preparation for a peaceful farewell. Even discussing when to remove life-support was a conversation we weren’t prepared for emotionally.
Brooklyn, determined to be as close as possible, relocated to a hotel near the hospital. I became a shuttle between our home, our eldest daughters, and the hospital—a commuter consumed by work, love, anxiety. Every drive was a swirl of prayer and fear.
Then came July 8—the day Brooklyn went into labor. We had learned to steel ourselves before each appointment, but now came a final, gut-wrenching meeting in the operating suite: when should the breathing tube be removed if our son struggled to breathe after birth?
And then…
He cried.
His first scream broke across the operating room and into our hearts. That single, fragile cry was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.
Tears blurred my vision as the nursing team swaddled him. We knew he would spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit—but for the first time, fear mingled with hope. Brooklyn and I exchanged glances so full of disbelief and gratitude I didn’t know how to speak.