UPDATE May 21: Emily Scarbrough says her newborn son, Jaycen, is now home from the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital and is able to eat on his own. He now weighs five pounds and is thriving.

Emily Scarbrough says she and her 86-year-old mother, Joyce Parsons, were very close and spoke often by phone during her pregnancy. Scarbrough last saw her mother in person when she was 13 weeks along with the baby she would call Jaycen, named for Joyce.

Now Scarbrough says that she is encouraged that Jaycen is getting stronger every day in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital, after he was born prematurely. Her early transition into labor came as she was coping with news about her mother 350 miles away at a nursing home and then a hospital in the Columbus, Ohio area.

Days prior to Jaycen being born prematurely, Scarbrough says she and her mother's best friend had both been checking on her by phone and hearing she did not feel well.

"She was telling me she was having trouble breathing," said Scarbrough.

Parsons was put on a ventilator, and passed away in an Ohio hospital. The timing of her death, just minutes away from the birth of her grandson.

"She passed at 9:23 and I had him at 9:36," said Scarbrough.

Parsons' best friend, Melissa Perley, said, "They crossed paths and a piece of her got picked up by that little one."