The baby named Button sure was in a hurry to come into the world. Ever since then, she’s led quite the life, as has her mother. It’s been a tough life all around. And they’re looking for help.
Button—officially Jrdyn (pronounced “Jordan”) Makaylee Duncan—was born on Oct. 16, 2023, at ProMedica Toledo Hospital at 22 weeks, a little more than half of the usual 40 weeks of a typical pregnancy. That means she was not only a preemie—a premature baby—but a micropreemie. Meaning, she was born with many physical problems because she wasn’t fully developed.
Since then, Button—it’s not because she’s cute as a button, although she is, but because in the womb she pushed up on her mother’s belly button—has been in two other hospitals’ neonatal intensive care units and in houses and apartments from Toledo to Columbus while receiving treatments, and still looking for a place for her and her mother to call their own.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Her mother, Stacee Duncan, tells the tale from the beginning.
Button’s story
Duncan said she and Button’s father broke up before Button was born. Compounding the fact that she was to be a single parent, she had her own medical problems, including epilepsy and age (she was 37; this was her first pregnancy). Duncan had to be on bed rest because her pregnancy was considered high risk…