PART 3
The induction started just after midnight.
The room was dim except for the monitors beside my bed.
My husband sat next to me, holding my hand.
Neither of us talked much.
There wasn’t much left to say.
For months, we’d imagined this moment.
Now it was finally here.
Only it didn’t feel like the beginning we’d dreamed about.
It felt like a race against time.
The nurses checked his heartbeat constantly.
Every time the monitor changed, my heart jumped.
Then, sometime before sunrise, the doctor came in.
“He’s ready.”
My hands started shaking.
I looked at my husband.
“Are we really about to meet him?”
He smiled through tears.
“Yeah.”
A few hours later, our son was born.
And the entire room became quiet.
There was no loud cry.
No dramatic moment.
Just a tiny baby being lifted carefully into the world.
“He’s here,” the nurse whispered.
I couldn’t see him clearly at first.
Then they brought him closer.
And I saw his face.
His little mouth.
His tiny fingers.
The features we’d stared at on ultrasound screens for months were suddenly real.
I reached out.
“Can I hold him?”
They placed him on my chest.
I started crying immediately.
5
He was so small.
But he was beautiful.
I whispered his name.
“Ezrah.”
His little hand moved against my chest.
My husband leaned over us.
“Hey, buddy.”
For a few minutes, nothing else existed.
Not the diagnosis.
Not the doctors.
Not the statistics.
Not the future.
Just us.
A mother.
A father.
And their son.
The nurses took him for some tests.
His oxygen levels needed to be monitored.
There were concerns about feeding.
But he was fighting.
And we were grateful for every second.
Our other boys eventually came to meet him.
They stood around the hospital bed, nervous and excited.
One of them looked at Ezrah and whispered:
“He’s really little.”
I laughed through my tears.
“Yes, he is.”
Then he asked the question I’d been dreading.
“Is he going to be okay?”
I looked at my husband.
We didn’t know.
So I answered honestly.
“We don’t know how long we’ll have with him.”
The room became quiet.
“But however long we have…”
I looked down at Ezrah.
“…we’re going to love every second.”
For the next few days, we lived in a strange world.
Sometimes Ezrah was stable.
Sometimes the monitors made our hearts race.
Sometimes we thought we’d be taking him home.
Then another problem would appear.
But every morning, I walked into his room and said the same thing.
“Good morning, handsome.”
And every night, I whispered:
“Mommy loves you.”
We stopped counting the days.
We started counting moments.
His first bath.
His tiny yawns.
The way he held our fingers.
The sound of his brothers talking to him.
The little expressions he made while sleeping.
Everything became precious.
Then, thirteen days after he was born…
I woke up before sunrise.
Something felt different.
I walked into his room.
The nurses were already there.
My heart dropped.
One of them looked at me.
“Mom…”
I knew.
Before anyone said another word…
I knew.
