HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Not too many years ago, just surviving as a one-pound, five-ounce baby born at 26 weeks gestation would have been a miracle.

Not anymore. Tiny Luke Antosh — delivered Feb. 17 by emergency c-section at UPMC Magee Womens in Harrisburg after his mother, Lynn Antosh, developed preeclampsia — had a decent prognosis at first.

But a week later, the real problems started. He “almost died twice,” said Lynn, who would know, because she’s a hospice nurse. The second time, with pulmonary hypertension crisis and his vital signs declining, Lexie Mastro — a neonatal physician assistant — got the call while she was at another hospital.

“They said, ‘Luke’s not doing well,” she recalled.

She rushed to Harrisburg, and Luke’s vital signs on a monitor spoke for themselves, although Lexie spoke to Lynn and John Antosh — Lynn’s husband, Luke’s father — herself.

Given her profession, “I was used to having these types of conversations with people,” Lynn said, although always before on Lexie’s side of the conversation — not the one on which she now found herself.

“They pretty much exhausted everything in their power here to try and save him,” Lynn Antosh recalled. “And nothing was working. It was Lexie’s idea to get him out of bed, because that was supposed to be the ‘last hold'” — exactly what it sounds like.

The hospital team turned the monitor around, out of view of the Antoshes. Not that they didn’t understand what was happening.

“I knew how bad things were,” Lynn Antosh said. “But they just wanted us to focus on holding him and not worry about: how much time do we have?”

Although Lexie knew the trajectory of things, she held onto one faint reason for hope: The “last hold” meant close skin-to-skin contact between Luke and his parents’ chests. And as it happens, that kind of “kangaroo care,” as it’s also known, has documented benefits for infants — albeit, to be clear, usually ones not in as dire a condition as Luke was in.

“When an infant is placed skin to skin with moms and dads, it can help to promote bonding,” Mastro said. “It can help infants to feel calm. And it’s very neurodevelopmentally friendly.”

Not that a good outcome in this case was likely. But hope was all the Antoshes had.

“Hope is such an interesting thing — in all of medicine, but especially areas of critical care,” Mastro said.

And then — on that monitor Mastro and the caregivers could see and the Antoshes couldn’t — suddenly the vital signs looked more vital.

“We all looked at the monitor, and we thought, ‘Okay, Luke loves skin to skin.’ That’s what we all thought: ‘Luke loves skin to skin, and so we’re going to leave him skin to skin,'” Mastro said.

They did, and he continued improving. Lynn became more hopefully but — based on her hospice experience — remained cautious.

“Usually when someone passes, they have what we call a ‘rally’ where they’ll get all this energy and they look like they’re doing better” before again declining, she said.

But not this time.

Now Luke weighs five pounds, four ounces. He’ll still need the early interventions all premature babies need. But his prognosis is excellent.

John Antosh remembers looking out a hospital window that day when Luke’s prognosis was most dire.

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“Was this the last time I’ll look outside and say, ‘My son’s alive?'” he remembers thinking. Hours later, as things turned around, “I’m sitting here and I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe I can look outside again and say he’s still alive?'”

The meaning of this weekend isn’t lost on Lynn Antosh.

“You think about all the things when you think your baby’s going to die,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s going to be Mother’s Day. And I’m going to have to say, ‘I’m a mom, but….’ But you know, that didn’t happen. And he’s still here.”

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