Before Cohen was even born, his parents were given three options.
Terminate the pregnancy.
Continue the pregnancy, skip the surgeries and love their baby for however long he survived.
Or fight for his life with a series of major heart surgeries, knowing there was no guarantee they would work.
Abby and Cody chose the third option.
Today, their baby boy is here.
He has already survived his first open-heart surgery.
And just within the last few hours, his mom reached back out to tell me something they once could only pray would happen:
Cohen is off the ventilator and breathing without it.

I first shared this family’s story in June, when Abby was 30 weeks pregnant.
Doctors had diagnosed their unborn son with a severe form of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, or HLHS, involving mitral valve stenosis and aortic atresia.
It is a life-threatening congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped.
Abby understood exactly what doctors were telling her.
She heard the statistics.
She heard the risks.
She knew attempting the staged surgeries meant choosing a road filled with uncertainty.
But she also knew something else.
As long as there was a road forward for her son, she wanted to give him the opportunity to take it.

“There were doctors who prepared me for the worst,” Abby told me. “There were conversations where I felt like choosing to fight for my son’s life was questioned, as if his diagnosis of HLHS somehow made his life less worth fighting for.”
Then came the line I haven’t been able to get out of my head:
“His heart may have been born with only half of what it should have, but his life has never been worth half as much.”
On August 14th, Cohen finally arrived.
His parents got to meet the little boy they had been fighting for before they could even hold him.
Then came his first enormous test.
Open-heart surgery.
Cohen made it through.
His mom says he has been doing everything his medical team has asked of him “and more.”
Initially, the hope was that doctors could begin weaning him from the ventilator over the next several days.
Then Cohen beat that timeline, too.
Abby messaged me again to say he had just been extubated.

“He is doing well. We are so proud of our little fighter.”
That doesn’t mean the fight is over.
HLHS will require continued specialized care and additional staged heart surgeries, and Cohen still faces a road filled with uncertainty.
But today his family gets to celebrate something they were never promised:
Their son is HERE.
Abby also wants everyone who has prayed for Cohen on my page to know how much those prayers have meant.
So please keep saying his name.
Keep praying for his heart.
Keep praying for healing without complications.
Keep praying for strength for the surgeries and challenges still ahead.
And leave some love for this little boy and his parents below who made one incredible choice:
“I chose it because my son was worth fighting for.”