Six-year-old who always wanted to be an older brother has tear-jerking first contact with newborn sibling
Jessica Marotta of Melrose, Massachusetts says that her six-year-old son Mikey had always wanted to be an older brother. After experiencing a tragic miscarriage, his parents were doing whatever they could to be able to give their son a sibling to grow up with. Jessica was able to get pregnant again and Mikey got to be the older brother, but the journey was far from easy.
Jessica spoke to PEOPLE and said, "He was always asking, ‘When am I going to get my baby brother?’ It’s really hard to get you a baby brother. So we’d just say, 'When it’s time'. He just wanted to be a brother so badly and he would see all his friends and schoolmates getting brothers, so I think that was hard for him. But he really stuck it out," she added. In the year 2017, she unfortunately suffered a miscarriage and she and her husband Michael Marotta could not bear to tell little Mikey.
"We would never want him to be burdened with that sadness. It was something we had been trying for so long … then we had the loss, we were devastated. I was heartbroken. We felt like we didn’t deserve what happened to us. But at the same time, it happens to so many people," she continued. Around eight months later, Jessica found out that she was pregnant again but the couple did not tell Mikey until the pregnancy had reached 12 weeks.
"I was shocked that we were pregnant but then we refused to get excited. We were so scared that we didn’t talk about it at all. We wanted to wait until we were out of the first trimester to tell our siblings," she said adding that Mikey was absolutely delighted at the news. "He was very teary-eyed and excited. He was very emotional. [He] wanted to know when the baby was going to come," she added.
Jessica and Michael had another baby boy on March 6 and Jake was born via a C-section as he was nine weeks early. Jessica shared that she was not even allowed to hold the baby until the next day and even though Mikey was able to see his baby brother the day he was born, he had to wait a week to hold his brother a week later. When everything was finally ready, Mikey was able to make his first contact with his new baby brother.
"It was very sweet. He was very excited. When he started holding Jake he just giggled, it was a nervous giggle. He blinked a lot because he was really emotional. It was probably one of the most emotional things I’ve ever seen without a lot of tears because he was so happy at the same time," Marotta said. Jessica first shared her experience and journey with 'Love What Matters'. She was released from the hospital five days after giving birth but Jake had to remain in neonatal intensive care for around 62 days.
Jessica revealed that the brothers are now inseparable. "[Mikey] loves him so much. He snuggles with him, he says the most beautiful things to him and tells him funny stories. Jake has brought a calmness to Mikey … even if Jake’s screaming, Mikey comes over and tries to calm him down, soothe him," Jessica continued. "He was made to be this big brother. The two of them together are pretty amazing. Mikey was the first one to make [Jake] smile. For a long time, he would only smile at Mikey. I truly think that they will be close for the rest of their lives," Jessica concluded.