This tender account is vividly rendered, with husband and wife writing alternating chapters, so the story is told from different perspectives, and in distinct voices, but with a shared energy and urgency.

"Underneath it's just a love letter to my little girl."

Kelley: We’re so different as writers. In the middle of the process, I thought, Why would anyone do this? This is a stupid way to make a living.

Mom.me tells Juniper's story after reading the letter she wrote to Olympic gymnast Simone Biles. Watch the video here. 

Tom and Kelley were determined to give Juniper every chance to live.

Tampa Bay Times reporter Kelley Benham went into labor four months early and delivered her daughter, Juniper, at 23 weeks: a baby who weighed 20 ounces and was no taller than a Barbie doll. Doctors told Benham and her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer and University of Indiana and Goucher College instructor Tom French, that the tiny infant was almost certain to die and would suffer from severe disabilities if she lived. 

Juniper spent six months in a NICU — a place Tom describes as “an almost alien place, a very science fiction world where these babies who were meant to be inside their mothers are suddenly out.”

Born at just 23 weeks and 6 days, doctors said she probably wouldn’t make it. But she proved everyone wrong.

Juniper, Kelley and Tom French participated in the 2012 All Children's Hospital Telethon.