Here is our story of how an AFE has turned our lives upside down.
Dec 11th 2014 my wife texted me and said that it was time for me to come home for the birth of our 8th child. This was our 7th homebirth, the other 6 an amazing success. I got home and filled the birthing tub. She would always wait till the last minute to call the midwife or me. She would cook and clean while stopping to have a contraction. By the time I got the tub filled she was ready to labor in it. The midwife checked her and the baby and it was time to get her to push. As the pain got worse she looked at me and said it was so hard. I tried to comfort her as best I could.
Then she passed out in the tub…
I yelled at the midwife and she asked if she had ever done that before and I told her never. We called 911 and got her out of the tub onto the bed. We could see that she wasn’t breathing so we tried CPR. She kind of came to a little bit and was trying to push the baby out with all she had while not being able to breath. She then passed out again never to awaken. The Ambulance arrived shortly there after and they loaded her up and took her to the hospital. When we got there they assessed her and then did an emergency C section in the ER. They then struggled to keep her alive as I sat outside the curtain more afraid than I had ever been in my entire life before. They took Lilly to the NICU to try to save her but to no avail. They stabilized Charlsie in ICU and packed her abdomen with gauze and closed her up temporally because her core temp had dropped.
The next day they started talking about Brain injury due to blood loss. After running some tests they determined that she was 75%-95% brain dead. The docs asked me if I wanted to proceed with the surgery anyway and I said yes. I wanted time to pray for a healing and see it come about. But as time progressed I started to understand that God was going to take the delight of my eyes (Ez 24:16) and I started to prepare the children and myself as best I could.
After 5 grueling weeks of watching her almost bite through her lip when she would have seizure like episodes and seeing her kept alive by machines, she died on my 6 year old’s birthday Jan 17th. We are still in the very beginning stages of living life without her. We still see how much she sacrificed and loved us in everything that is around us. I’m not sure if things would have been different if we would have had a hospital birth, but there is a chance I would be holding a sweet little girl and perhaps snuggled next to my wife if we would have known more about AFE.
This is why we are all posting our stories, donating our time, and money. Lord willing we might be able to save one baby or one momma and it will all be worth it.
