Mother Gives Own Life To Save Unborn Child

Brace yourselves, women this is heart-achingly sad. It’s about Stacie Crimm, a 41-year-old single woman who got pregnant against all odds (doctors had previously told her she would never be able to conceive). But as her pregnancy progressed, she sensed that something was wrong, health-wise; Crimm suffered from crippling headaches, double vision and tremors (not exactly your typical signs of pregnancy). Tests revealed she had neck and head cancer.

Suddenly, Crimm was faced with an unbearable decision: potentially save her own life through chemotherapy, or the life of her unborn baby. Crimm chose the latter.

According to news reports, Crimm collapsed in her home while 20 weeks pregnant and was rushed to the hospital. Days later, the baby’s heart rate dropped and doctors determined that delivering the baby was the only way to save its life. And so they did just that. Dottie Mae came into the world on August 18 (she weighed 2 pounds, 1 ounce); her mother died 24 days later.

Amazingly, Crimm held on for long enough to hold her baby girl. Although she was in intensive care she had stopped breathing and was resuscitated more than once hospital staff arranged for Dottie Mae to be wheeled from neonatal intensive care to her mom’s bed, where she was lifted from her incubator and placed on her mother’s chest.

”I hope I live long enough to have this baby,” Crimm had told her brother Ray Phillips upon hearing her prognosis. ”Bubba, if anything happens to me, you take this child.” And so the healthy, 5-pound baby now lives with with Phillips along with his wife Jennifer and their four children.

It’s an inconceivably sad story, to say the least, and a reminder of how precious life is and why we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff (cliche but true).

(Photo: canada.com)

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