OLIVER'S STORY
Why SLOTH exists
This is the story that started it all — a story of a one-pound fighter, a devoted family, and a system that wasn’t ready for either of them.
“SLOTH didn’t start in a boardroom. It started in a hospital room — five hours from home — with a one-pound baby and a mother who refused to give up.”
My name is Michelle, and this is my son Oliver.
Oliver was born on May 30th, 2023, at 24 weeks and 2 days, weighing one pound, one ounce. I had no prior health issues. No warning signs. Then severe eclampsia changed everything overnight, and I found myself hospitalized for weeks — watching monitors, praying his heart rate would hold — before an emergency C-section brought him into the world far too soon.
He was intubated at birth. Placed on an oscillator. Transferred for surgery, then transferred back. From his very first breath, Oliver was touch and go. But every time the odds stacked against him, he fought. And we held on to the belief — the desperate, necessary belief — that one day, he was coming home.
He did. In January 2024. For two weeks.
Then he was back in the PICU. Genetics testing revealed Surfactant Protein C Deficiency — a rare condition his team was navigating in real time, without a shared roadmap. We spent months at Children’s Hospital of Michigan before being transferred to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Eight months. Five hours from everyone we loved.
My husband Christopher drove to Cincinnati every single weekend without fail. Every weekend, he got in that car and he came. He was our rock. But Sunday nights would come, and I would watch him drive away, and walk back into that hospital alone.
My mom and mother-in-law came as often as they could. Those visits felt like oxygen. But then they left, and the quiet that followed was its own kind of grief.
We thought we were losing Oliver every few weeks. The word “lung transplant” entered our vocabulary.
They gave us a binder.
If you have ever been handed a binder like that, you know exactly what it means.
Then came the tracheostomy. And everything changed. The trach gave Oliver stability he hadn’t had in a very long time. He moved to the TCC — a trach specialty unit — and for the first time, we began learning how to care for him at home. We went from preparing for the worst to preparing to leave.
Today, Oliver is home.
He loves music. He rides his bike. He lights up every room he enters — and he has earned every single moment of it.
We lost Christopher before we could see this dream fully realized. He believed in Oliver with everything he had — and he believed in this mission too. SLOTH was built on his love for his son, his willingness to show up no matter what, and his quiet, unwavering strength.
We are continuing this work in his honor. We made a promise to Christopher. We intend to keep it.
Our journey was hard not just because Oliver was sick. It was hard because the system wasn’t built for kids like him. Different hospitals, different teams, different information. No shared standards. No shared knowledge. Families navigating the most terrifying experience of their lives without a guide.
That’s why SLOTH exists.
So the next family gets a roadmap instead of a binder.
— Michelle, Co-Founder, SLOTH