Born at 29 Weeks

The picture you see here is one of the first photos I took of our son, Aldin (ALL-deen).

He is just a few hours old, lying in an incubator that looks far too big for his tiny body. Even his micro preemie diaper had to be folded because it was still too big on him. Tubes, wires, and tape covered more of him than skin. His whole hand could barely wrap around the tip of my wife’s finger, but he reached for it anyway.

Aldin was born at 29 weeks and 1 day, weighing 1.98 lbs (900 grams) and measuring 13.98 inches (35.5 cm). The numbers still feel unreal when I say them out loud. Nothing about that day matched the birth story we imagined.

My wife went in for what should have been a quick routine prenatal visit. I stayed behind to work. When she called, I expected a simple update. Instead, her voice was shaky. Something was wrong, and she needed me at the hospital right away.

Within minutes we learned she needed a higher level of care than the current hospital could not provide. She was transferred by ambulance to the main hospital. The team tried to keep her stable as long as possible, but after five days, they told us our son was coming. Not in weeks. That night.

And then everything sped up.

Instead of holding him in a quiet room, I watched a team of nurses and doctors move with purpose, speaking in terms I did not yet understand, while I tried to absorb the reality that our child had arrived almost three months early.

The NICU became our world overnight. We learned how to scrub in, how to read the monitors, and how to tell the difference between a routine alarm and the kind that makes your heart drop. What we thought might be a short stay turned into 76 days of showing up, hoping, learning, and celebrating the tiniest wins. Time shifted from days and weeks to grams gained, reading oxygen levels, and "one more good night."

In the middle of all that, moments like the one in this photo kept me grounded. The rise and fall of his chest. The quiet strength in a body that small.

Those moments are why Little Quack, Big Heart exists.

In the book, Aldin becomes Ace, a tiny duck with a big heart. His story is inspired by this exact season of our lives: the fear, the hope, and everything in between. I wanted NICU parents, grandparents, big siblings, and friends of preemies, as well as all the little fighters themselves, to see their experience in these pages and feel a little less alone.

So much of Ace’s character comes from moments like this one: small, fragile, and full of fight.

This photo is hard to look at and comforting at the same time. Hard, because we remember how scared we were. Comforting, because we know how far he has come.

Our 29-week beginning is where Ace’s story truly starts.