When Alyssa and Adam Bruce were preparing to welcome their first child, they thought they had months left before they would meet their son. Jaxson was due June 28, 2023.
Instead, on March 19, Alyssa unexpectedly went into premature labor. There had been no complications during her pregnancy and no warning that their baby was about to arrive more than three months early. Jaxson was born in Findlay, Ohio, weighing just 1 pound, 14 ounces.
Because the local hospital could not provide the level of NICU care he needed, Jaxson was transported to Toledo shortly after his birth. Alyssa couldn’t go with him. Recovering from an emergency C-section, she remained hospitalized in Findlay for two more nights while Adam traveled between his wife and newborn son.
“It was very, very stressful,” Alyssa said. “My only way of really knowing how he was doing was if my husband was able to go up and see him, or if anything happened in the middle of the night, the doctors would call me.”
While Alyssa was still in Findlay, one of those calls came. Jaxson had experienced serious brain bleeds.
“That was not a good phone call to have to take and be away from him when we found that out,” she said.
It was the beginning of a medical journey that would take their family from Findlay to Toledo and eventually Ann Arbor, Michigan. But first, Alyssa needed to get to her son.
Finally, Close to Jaxson
Once she was discharged from the hospital, Alyssa joined Adam in Toledo. The distance from Findlay was less than an hour, but after long days in the NICU, the drive felt much farther.
“It was a huge drive, especially at the end of the day after we were up visiting Jaxson,” Alyssa said. “Knowing that we were leaving him for the whole night and not being able to see him until the morning.”
Alyssa had heard of Ronald McDonald House before, but she hadn’t realized its services were available to families with babies experiencing extended NICU stays. After one of Jaxson’s nurses encouraged the couple to reach out, that changed.
For 79 nights, Ronald McDonald House Northwest Ohio gave Alyssa and Adam something they desperately needed: a place of their own, just minutes from their son.
“Being able to have that flexibility once we were able to stay up there was huge,” Alyssa said.
If Jaxson needed them, they could be there.
More Than a Place to Sleep
Before their stay, Alyssa understood that Ronald McDonald House provided families with somewhere to sleep. She didn’t realize how much everything else would matter.
There were meals waiting after long days at the hospital, snacks and baked goods when they needed something quick, and everyday necessities when their attention was focused somewhere else. Most importantly, there was a room where Alyssa and Adam could close the door.
“Being able to have a place to go relax after a long day or if you got bad news was just huge,” Alyssa said. “Obviously you want to be with your baby as much as possible, but you also do need that break.”
One particularly difficult day, Alyssa and Adam learned that Jaxson had developed hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain. After hours at the hospital, they reached a point where they needed to leave.
“We were like, ‘We can’t be in this hospital anymore,’” Alyssa recalled.
They walked back to Ronald McDonald House and, for a while, simply sat silently in their room. Eventually, they went downstairs and met another mother whose child was receiving medical care. In an unexpected coincidence, she was also from Findlay and worked for the same company as Adam.
The conversation gave Alyssa and Adam something they hadn’t realized they needed: time with someone who understood.
“At the time, you kind of feel like you’re alone and nobody else is going through this,” Alyssa said. “Being able to talk to other moms and dads and just talk about our journeys was really something that was great that I didn’t realize we would need until we needed it.”
Five Days to Hold Him
Through it all, Jaxson continued fighting and growing. Five days after he was born, Alyssa was finally able to hold her son.
For a mother who had always felt comfortable around babies, holding her own child was suddenly frightening. Jaxson was still tiny, surrounded by wires and tubes.
“I was terrified of this little baby,” Alyssa said. “I was so scared of dropping him or moving wrong that a tube would come out someplace.”
The NICU team helped put her at ease.
“It was terrifying, but also probably one of the greatest things that I’ll ever remember,” she said.
As the days became weeks, Alyssa and Adam learned to live with the uncertainty of the NICU. Jaxson’s brain bleeds led to hydrocephalus, and he underwent surgery in Toledo to place a reservoir to help manage the condition. His parents later learned he would need a VP shunt and ongoing pediatric neurosurgical care.
The family made the difficult decision to transfer Jaxson to a children’s hospital in Ann Arbor. After 79 nights at Ronald McDonald House Northwest Ohio, they packed their things and followed their son to Michigan, where another Ronald McDonald House welcomed them for approximately eight more weeks.
“We had quite a lot of stays at different Ronald McDonald Houses,” Alyssa said. “But all were a blessing because they were right across the street from the hospitals Jaxson was at.”
Meet Jaxson Today
Three years later, the tiny baby Alyssa was once afraid to move in her arms isn’t so tiny anymore.
“He’s doing great now,” she said. “He’s walking, talking, just a crazy little man, a crazy little three-year-old.”
Jaxson has cerebral palsy, something Alyssa wishes more people understood isn’t one single experience. When she first began sharing his diagnosis with family and friends, she frequently heard the same response: “I’m so sorry.”
Today, she wants people to know there is no reason to feel sorry for her son.
“Jaxson has a very normal life,” Alyssa said. “He walks, he runs, he talks. He does all of the things. There’s really no reason to be sorry for Jaxson. He’s doing great.”
Cerebral palsy can look different for every person, she said, but a diagnosis doesn’t define who someone is.
“They’re people just like us,” Alyssa said. “They have minds, they have personalities, and they are just all little kids that love life like the rest of us.”
A Promise Made After the First Night
The Bruce family’s time at Ronald McDonald House changed how Alyssa and Adam viewed the organization, and it happened almost immediately.
“After our first night there, both me and my husband discussed that for our lifetime, we will donate to the Ronald McDonald House,” Alyssa said.
Someday, when Jaxson is older, they hope to return as a family and prepare a meal for other guests. They know now how much that meal can mean.
For Alyssa, the greatest gift wasn’t any one service. It was having somewhere she and Adam could simply be together while remaining close to their son.
“We were always surrounded by doctors and nurses,” she said. “Being able to go somewhere where it was just me and my husband, to decompress and share all of our emotions with each other, and still be so close to Jaxson, that was huge.”
Today, the family that once couldn’t imagine what the next several months might hold can look back at just how far Jaxson has come. And for another parent standing at the beginning of a NICU journey, Alyssa has a message she learned through her own experience:
“Take it day by day,” she said.
Early in Jaxson’s hospitalization, Alyssa found herself thinking years into the future. She worried about what life would look like when he was five, when he started school, when he reached high school and eventually adulthood. Eventually, she realized she couldn’t live all of those days at once.
“The NICU is a crazy roller coaster,” Alyssa said. “You’ll have very, very good days, maybe even a couple in a row, and then you’ll have very, very bad days.”
But she learned not to let the hardest days become the whole story.
“Those bad days do not define you or your baby,” she said.
For Alyssa and Adam, there were 79 nights in Toledo, eight more weeks in Ann Arbor, surgeries, uncertainty and days when all they could do was sit together in silence.
There was also the first time Alyssa held Jaxson, people who understood what they were going through and a place across the street where they could rest.
And today, there is a three-year-old boy who walks, runs, talks and, as his mom puts it, is a “crazy little man.”
One day at a time brought the Bruce family here.