Mathews native Taylor Jacobs has a rocky road ahead, but with the help of family and friends, she’s facing it with hope and determination.Now 28 weeks through her second pregnancy, the founder of Little Shepherds Academy, a daycare and preschool in Mathews, is closing her business as of Wednesday, Nov. 15, and moving to Philadelphia to try to save the life of her unborn child.

When she and her boyfriend Dilan Cotman of Gloucester went for the standard 20-week pregnancy ultrasound, said Taylor, they found out they were having a girl. But the ultrasound discovered something else, as well—that baby Waverly has a life-threatening birth defect called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.

CDH is a hole in a baby’s diaphragm, the muscle that helps a person breathe and that separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity. Because of the hole, Waverly’s stomach, small intestine, spleen, and part of her liver have moved into her chest cavity, collapsing her left lung and pushing her heart...