Gratitude and thanks fill the Wehrley home in Medina, as well as their hearts.
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"We kind of have a theme," said Lacey Wehrley. "He's Justin. Our son was Jayden. And we wanted another J name. So, this is Jovie!"
Jovie is their daughter. She was born on July 17 at 3:20 p.m.
"She was just a tiny little peanut," Lacey said. "She was 4 pounds and 13 ounces."
It is amazing how someone so small can have such a significant impact on your life.
"She has filled our hearts and fixed our hearts in ways we didn’t know we needed," said Lacey.
News 5 first met the Wehrleys in 2022. They shared how they had lost their son, Jayden, at 31 weeks.
The couple also described how it was a trauma compounded by the distance to their closest labor and delivery unit.
"My placenta ended up abrupting at home, and I started bleeding uncontrollably," she recalled.
Lacey suffered a sudden and severe case of preeclampsia that almost took her life, as well.
"He is still very much a part of our family," Lacey said about their son, Jayden. "We have a bear; it’s called a Molly Bear that we use to represent him. We used it in our newborn photos with her. He might not be here physically, but we feel him, and we know he was looking over her the whole time, and that’s her guardian angel."
This time around with Jovie, the couple took no chances.
They waited a year and planned with their doctors.
In the final two and half weeks of Lacey’s high-risk pregnancy, they moved into an extended stay in North Olmsted to be closer to their labor and delivery unit and emergency maternal medicine at Fairview Hospital in Cleveland. It was a five-minute drive instead of about 35 minutes from their home in Medina.
"Or we needed to call 911; we knew they would take us to Fairview versus a hospital here and then have to be life-flighted or something again," said Lacey.
"We did not want that to happen," added Justin.
They said it was peace of mind.
It was the right decision for them, as Lacey said she was again having some blood pressure issues, and her medical team decided at 36 weeks it was safer for Jovie to be on the outside than inside.
The couple says their birth experience with Jovie was beautiful. Which was exactly what they had hoped for and was their goal after the trauma they experienced during the emergency with their son.
"She came out crying and perfect and got to do skin-to-skin with Justin right away," said Lacey.
"I just lost it," he said. "I was just so joyful and in tears and just so blessed to be able to hold her for the first time."
They call Jovie their miracle baby.
