She grabbed my finger and squeezed tight. My husband looked up to the monitor. ‘She has no heartbeat, baby!’: Mom pregnant with twins delivers 1-pound baby premature, brother born 11 days later

“After 2 failed attempts at IVF to start our little family, my husband and I decided we would try one last time praying that the 3rd time would be as they say, ‘the charm’.

Surprisingly, we found out we were pregnant with twins. We were over the moon with joy. Twins! How could this be we thought, how did we get so lucky!?

Before we knew it those feelings of excitement were quickly stripped away from us when after several scares and trips to the hospital landed me on at home bed rest where I could only get up to shower, use the restroom or eat really quick. The doctors had found that my cervix was shortening by the day.

Doing everything we could to keep the babies in, we opted to do a cerclage procedure. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is where they sew your cervix shut in hopes it will keep the babies in until they are at a healthy point where they can survive outside of the womb. My high-risk doctor wanted to be extra safe so decided to put an extra stitch in.

This procedure took place at 16 weeks of pregnancy. Around this same time, we found out be still our hearts were having a baby boy and a baby girl. Baby Jax Jayden and Baby Mila Marie. We had picked those names out at the very beginning of our trying to conceive journey and to us they were the perfect names!

At 21 weeks of pregnancy things quickly went even more south when I woke up to a large amount of bleeding. One of the two cerclage stitches had pulled through from the weight of the babies bearing down on the cervix. Scared to death not knowing what our future held I was placed on hospital bed rest until the babies came.

On October 4, 2015 at 22 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy Twin A – ‘Mila’ started making her way through the last stitch. With her head already crowning the doctors gave my husband and I the choice to do a c-section and have both babies born or cut the remaining stitch and let her be born and see if Twin B ‘Jax’ makes his way out as well.

After making the decision to cut the stitch at 7:37 AM, Mila Marie Voogt was born weighing in at 1 lbs. 1 oz and 10 1/2 inches long. With an end loop in place after Mila’s birth Jax was able to stay on board a little bit longer.

Since I was ordered to stay on the labor and delivery floor as it was unknown what would happen with me next, I was unable to make it to the floor directly above mine to see and spend time with our daughter. Mila was born with a brain bleed but for being such a small baby and having the issues she did she continued to surprise us on a daily basis with how amazing she was doing.

Sadly 4 days after being born on October 8, 2015 Mila became very weak. The doctors doing everything they could to figure out what was wrong they discovered she had a small hole in her intestines. With daddy right by her side, the doctors quickly jumped into action and operated on her in hopes they could stop the toxins from pouring into her tiny helpless body.

Due to her issues from being born so early, Mila’s heart could no longer take anymore, and all of her levels began to drop. My nurses on labor and delivery rushed a gurney into my room so they could get me to her bedside as fast as possible. I made my way up and the moment I became bedside I for the first time ever touched our daughter.

We’ve never prayed harder than we did on this day. We prayed for her to breathe, we prayed for her to fight, we prayed for her levels to please come back up and by some miracle she came back to us. As her levels started to stabilize, she grabbed my finger and squeezed tight.

Not wanting to leave her side but knowing it was best for Jax I was wheeled back down to labor and delivery. They promised me if anything else were to happen they would come back in and get me.

Not even 20 minutes later the nurses came rushing back in. This time the moment I became bedside my husband looked up to the monitor and said, ‘She has no heartbeat baby!’ As we prayed and prayed again begging and pleading for her little body to pull through, they kept bagging her to get her to breathe. I looked up at her doctor and said, ‘She’s gone, isn’t she?’ with tears in his eyes he shook his head yes.

I asked them to please give me our daughter. They took all of her leads off and wrapped her in her pink prayer blanket we had placed on her incubator shortly after she was born. We held her in our arms for close to an hour just taking in every single curve and every single feature of her face, her tiny hands, her tiny feet, everything. We knew the moment we handed her back we would never be able to take those little things in like that ever again.

Having an extremely hard time coping with the death of our sweet angel 3 days later I started having contractions and soon after my water for Jax broke. We were trying to keep him in as long as possible to give him the best chances of surviving.

After 3 days of contractions my body wasn’t able to handle the end loop anymore and on October 15, 2015 at 24 weeks and 3 days pregnant, I woke up with a fever of 104. Dr. Desai, my high-risk doctor, who stuck by our side through all of this decided for the safety of the baby and now myself it was time to induce.

With Mila in our hearts at 10:19 AM that morning our beautiful rainbow baby made his way into this world. Weighing in at 1 Lbs. 4.8 Oz’s and 12 inches long. Jax Jayden Voogt had officially stayed inside me 11 days longer then his sister. Jax was sadly born with a brain bleed as well thankfully not as bad as Mila.

We never gave up hope, we never stopped praying even when we felt angry and confused, we did everything in our power to keep the faith. After 104 days of ups and downs in the NICU on January 26, 2016 Jax Jayden got to come home with us.

We’ve come so far with our little guy. Jax is an extremely smart, healthy, happy little boy who will be turning 4 years old October 15, 2019.

And SURPRISE he is about to become a big brother to a little sister ‘Brynlee Marie ‘middle name Marie in honor of his twin in heaven Mila.

Losing our sweet Mila Marie was truly one of the hardest things we have EVER had to go through so deciding to try for another child was a difficult decision for us to make. But we just couldn’t allow ourselves to live our lives in fear and ultimately end up keeping our son from possibly becoming a big brother.

At the end of 2018 we had officially made the decision to try once more via IVF which is the only way I can get pregnant and we have documented it all. Check out ‘The Voogt Family Vlog’ on YouTube to see our journey with our sweet Milaandand Jax as well as our current journey we are on with Brynlee.

This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Chelsey Voogt, 32, of Orlando, Florida. You can follow her journey on Instagram here and her family journey here. Follow their Vlog on here. Do you have a similar experience? We’d like to hear your important journey. Submit your own story here, and be sure to subscribe to our free email newsletter for our best stories.