Remember me
Before giving birth at just 23 weeks, a Tennessee mom was asked a heartbreaking question by doctors: "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
Without hesitation, Lex Ramirez answered yes, and she hasn’t looked back since. In a reel on Instagram, Ramirez (@lexramirez_) shared footage of her micro-premature baby in the incubator. The clip then shifted to a montage of her daughter, Mila, looking happy and healthy almost two years later.
Ramirez said that, in the delivery room, the question about continuing wasn’t something she and her husband, David, both 34, ever hesitated over. "When we were asked if we wanted to go through with it, our only answer was, ‘Do whatever it takes to save her.’ It’s all that mattered," she told Newsweek.
Labor was progressing quickly, and the plan for a natural birth was abandoned when doctors determined the baby was breech. A cesarean section offered the safest path.
Mila was born at a gestational age with extremely high risks. The early days in the neonatal intensive care unit brought one challenge after another.
One of the most-critical issues was a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) that prevented her from breathing independently. At 6 weeks old, Mila underwent a minimally invasive procedure using an Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder (a small, minimally invasive medical device) to close it.
Mila was extubated days later after no longer needing breathing support, a significant step forward, but the hurdles continued: infections, renal failure, chronic lung disease, retinopathy of prematurity, internal infantile hemangiomatosis and brain bleeds.
The unpredictability of the NICU made the early weeks and months emotionally draining. With their 4-year-old son, Rio, at home, the parents were torn.
"My heart was in two places, and I never felt complete," mom Lex said. "We clung to our faith, family and church community, The Belonging Co, here in Nashville. That’s what carried us through."
Today, Mila is a thriving 23-month-old. She has been off oxygen for 10 months, her eyesight and hearing are normal, and the hemangiomas that once caused concern have resolved. She has also been discharged from occupational, physical and feeding therapy.
Looking back, Lex said she sees her daughter not just as a survivor, but as her hero.
"Watching her fight and go through everything she has gone through, and overcoming it all, has been the greatest joy of our lives," Lex said. "She has changed us in the most-beautiful way. She’s my little warrior."
The Instagram reel has been viewed more than 64,000 times, with many other moms of micro-premature babies reaching out to the mom to share their experiences.
Lex’s message to parents in similar situations is grounded in the lessons she learned over nearly two years: the road is long, but it will not last forever.
"Some days, you won’t know how you’re going to make it through the day, but you will make it, and you’re going to be better from it," she said. "We have been transformed in the best ways because of our Mila Ray."