After already having three children, Erica Sanchez was confident that she could wait out the contractions with her soon-to-be arriving fourth child before going to the hospital.

It was Sept. 12, 2001, and she was outside with neighbors discussing the previous day’s terrorist attack on the United States when she suddenly felt like she needed to get to the hospital right away.

Nothing seemed obviously wrong to her, but she felt like the contractions weren’t totally normal and just felt like it was time to go.

When she got to the hospital, Sanchez’s instincts were confirmed to be right.

She was hooked up to monitors to track her contractions and the baby’s vital signs, and that’s when the medical staff realized that her baby didn’t have a heart beat.

Amid the chaos of calling in other doctors and trying to run tests, Sanchez remembers a very tall doctor walking into the room. She said even now, more than eight years later, she would still recognize him. Sanchez said he took one look at the monitor, snapped his fingers and said they needed to get the baby out now.

The baby was flat-lining on Sanchez’s contractions and doctors needed to perform an emergency cesarean-section.

The procedure went well and baby Jesiah was born. But the road to recovery would be a long one for the infant.

According to Sanchez, Jesiah’s pulmonary valves were closing, and he would need surgery to correct the problem. But doctors wanted to wait before performing the operation so he would be bigger. He weighed only about 4 pounds and doctors wanted him around 9 pounds for the surgery.

After spending 2½ weeks in an incubator, much to his mother’s surprise, Jesiah was sent home.

Sanchez was given a list of instructions for how to keep her baby healthy at home -- some of which included no loud or sudden noises, and to pinch his hands and toes frequently to make sure there was blood flowing.

This was not an easy feat for Sanchez, who had two other young children at home. She tried to keep her older children quiet and occupied, and she also had to tell friends and neighbors to not ring the door bell for fear that the loud noise would cause Jesiah to have a heart attack.

“I was extremely nervous,” Sanchez said. “I was extremely frightful. I was so scared he was going to have a heart attack.”

But Sanchez kept Jesiah healthy at home and he eventually was able to return to the hospital when he was 2½ months old to have surgery to correct his heart defect.

“That was probably the longest three hours of my life,” Sanchez said of waiting for Jesiah to come out of surgery.

Jesiah survived the operation -- during which, according to Sanchez, doctors patched the bottom chamber of Jesiah’s heart, stitched part of his top chamber and worked on his pulmonary valves -- and he spent eight days in the hospital to recover.

Now, he is an 8-year-old “whipper-snapper” and a “motor-mouth,” as his mother affectionately calls him.

Sanchez said that Jesiah knows he had surgery as a baby -- he calls his scar his “zipper,” and he knows that he will likely have to have another surgery later in life. Sanchez said that since he was so little when he had surgery that doctors will need to adjust a “patch” on his heart when he gets older.

Currently, Jesiah only needs to see the doctor once a year so they can perform ultrasounds and EKGs. That leaves 364 days a year for him to be a normal little boy -- with just a few exceptions.

Sanchez said Jesiah is “full of life,” but that he needs to follow certain restrictions when playing. He knows that he can’t play too rough, and his participation in sports is limited. Sanchez does have Jesiah in taekwondo classes, but she says he focuses more on the non-contact aspect of the sport, called forms, instead of sparring, and uses caution.

“He knows to turn if someone goes to kick him,” Sanchez said.

While Sanchez wants to make sure her 8-year-old son is safe and that no one will harm him or jeopardize his health, she knows she can’t obsess over worrying about him.

“You can only protect your kid so much,” Sanchez said.

Now, as her son is active and enjoying life, Sanchez wants to offer some advice to other parents who have children with heart ailments.

“Make sure you know all of the pros and cons,” Sanchez said. “Keep your head up, but you do have to prepare yourself for the worst, too, as bad as that sounds.”

Sanchez said she doesn’t want to focus on the negative, and that no parent wants to even consider the possibility that their child won’t recover, but she said that you do also have to face the reality of the situation.

She also added that nothing can prepare a parent for dealing with a child’s illness, and that no one knows how they are going to react or cope until they are actually going through it, but that no matter what, parents have to stay strong for their children.

Sanchez willed herself through Jesiah’s ordeal, and now she has the pleasure of watching him grow up with “so much life.”