Welcome to McKinley's Story

Butterfly Angels is an organization founded in 2013 after the unexpected loss of our infant daughter, McKinley Anne.

In August of 2012 we learned that we were expecting our third child. While we were not planning to expand our family and somewhat apprehensive since our lives were already so busy, it didn’t take long for us to get used to the idea and become very excited about a new baby.   In November we found out we would be having another healthy baby girl.  It took us awhile to find the name we would both agree on and finally decided on McKinley Anne. Her middle name would be the same as both of our mother’s middle names. We picked out paint colors for her nursery, new bedding and each monthly doctor appointment went perfectly.
 After a text book pregnancy, at 37 weeks gestation I woke up on the morning of March 19th, 2013 with sharp stomach pains and contractions. Even though they felt a little different than the contractions with my previous pregnancy, they were coming pretty quickly and I decided to go get checked. By the time I arrived there was almost no rest between my contractions and the stomach pain. I was taken to the labor and delivery floor at WVU Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia.  The nurse hooked me up to the fetal monitor and then left the room. I remember being in a lot of pain but I was still very excited to get through it and hold my new precious baby girl. The nurse came back into my room with a resident doctor on the floor. She wheeled in an ultrasound machine and started scanning my belly. I assumed she was checking the presentation of the baby as my first daughter was breech. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a concerned look on both of their faces. The doctor let out a sigh and her words still haunt me to this day. She asked, “When was the last time you felt the baby move?” Instantly I knew something was wrong and I couldn’t even respond.  She told me she couldn’t find the heartbeat. She called in a senior physician and he confirmed that our precious McKinley Anne was gone.

 I was in utter disbelief. Everything had gone so smoothly. How could this have happened? I was in so much shock I almost couldn’t cry. I could barely breathe.  I started to shake and began throwing up. The pain was so intense and the contractions were coming one right after the other with no rest. The nurse called for the physician to come back into the room and he broke my water and did another ultrasound. He confirmed that I had suffered a complication termed a complete placental abruption. This is where the placenta separates from the uterus wall and in my case, because it was a complete separation, it instantly cut off all blood supply to the baby.  In many cases when a woman is experiencing an abruption she will bleed and know to get to the hospital however in my case all of the blood I was losing was being trapped between the placenta and uterus. At this point my body was going into shock from losing so much blood.  I was immediately wheeled to the operating room for an emergency C-section.
When I woke up after the surgery I remember placing my hand on my belly and she was gone. That little bum I used to feel just under my rib cage was gone. The little elbow that would poke and prod the side of my belly was no more. The sweet, precious life that had flipped and flopped in there for the last nine months was gone.  There was no newborn cry, no meeting eyes with my new beautiful baby girl but just thoughts of how I was ever going to get over this? There were thoughts of anger. Why? Why would God let me come so far with her just to rip it away right at the finish line?  What a cruel, cruel waste of happiness I thought.  The nurses and doctor told me how fortunate I was that I got to the hospital when I did because the outcome for me could have been far worse than needing the 4 units of blood I had received.  I took no comfort in what they said because I felt like a part of me had died. A part of me wanted to die too. They brought her to our room wrapped in a pink blanket. She was so perfect. Lips just like her oldest sister, a button nose and a head full of dark strawberry blonde hair. I never wanted to give her back. I could have held her forever.  She looked like a sleeping angel. Not a mark on her, no sign of a struggle, just peace. McKinley was at peace but where was mine? I should have been signing birth certificate documents, not deciding which funeral home to call.

Continued... 

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