On March 25, 2010, Kate and David Ogg heard the words every parent dreads: Their newborn wasn't going to make it. Their twins--a girl and a boy--were born 14 weeks premature, weighing just over two pounds each. Doctors had tried to save the boy for 20 minutes but saw no improvement. His heartbeat was nearly gone, and he'd stopped breathing. The baby had just moments to live.
"I saw him gasp, but the doctor said it was no use," Kate said. "I know it sounds stupid, but if he was still gasping, that was a sign of life. I wasn't going to give up easily."
Still, the couple knew this was likely goodbye. In an effort to cherish her last minutes with the tiny boy, Kate asked to hold him.
"I wanted to meet him, and for him to know us," Kate said. "We'd resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to lose him, and we were just trying to make the most of those last, precious moments."
Kate unwrapped the boy, whom the couple had already named Jamie, from his hospital blanket and ordered David to take his shirt off and join them in bed. The first-time parents wanted their son to be as warm as possible and hoped the skin-to-skin contact would improve his condition. They also talked to him.
"We were trying to have him," Kate said. "We explained his name and that he had a twin and how hard we had tried to have him."
Then something miraculous happened. Jamie gasped again--and then he started breathing. Finally, he reached for his father's finger. The couple's lost boy had made it.
Eight years later, Jamie and his sister, Emily, are happy and healthy.
