BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Nineteen-month-old Jordon Ehli-Blocker has never left the hospital.
This year, he will spend another Christmas in a hospital room, hooked up to a machine with a tube in his throat.
He still has a big smile, grabs his mother's hand and makes happy noises.
When Jordon was born in May 2005, he weighed about a pound and a half. Doctors said it was a miracle he lived _ a miracle that he was even conceived. Researchers want to study him.
Scott Blocker and Lori Ehli, of Bismarck, were told they could have no children. Doctors said antirejection drugs Ehli needed after she received a kidney transplant from her brother, Brett, in 2002, would essentially make her infertile.
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After Ehli's grandfather, Roy Andahl, died just before Easter last year, she found she could not fit into any dresses for the funeral. Her doctor confirmed she was pregnant.
Jordon was born less than a month later in Minneapolis, three months premature.
"Lori wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant," Blocker, 38, said this week. "Then, we found out she was pregnant because of the funeral at Easter. We would never have known it if it wasn't for Roy dying. If we hadn't gotten down here so fast, both mom and baby could have died."
Ehli and her baby struggled for life in separate hospitals for 10 days after his birth. Ehli's blood pressure was dangerously low. Jordon's was dangerously high. He had no immune system. He developed emphysema.
Jordon continues to fight. He may need a lung transplant.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have asked to study Ehli and her baby intermittently for the rest of their lives, to try to figure out how he was able to be conceived. His medical costs are estimated at about $1 million a month, paid by Social Security.
Jordon now weighs 15 pounds, though he wears the clothes of a 6-month-old. He still smiles and laughs.
"He has been a miracle child since Day 1," his father said.
