Our Story
Hello and Welcome! My name is Madelyn and my husband's name is Ryne. Together we have our daughter Molly who is 3; our son, Cooper James; and our daughter Sophie, who is 7 months old. Ryne and I dreamt of having our own family one day, and our dreams are now a reality. In 2021, shortly after we got married, we found out we were pregnant. We were so excited, and could hardly wait to share the exciting news with our family and close friends. I was blessed with a beautiful pregnancy and we welcomed our baby girl, Molly Marie, in August 2022. From the time I got pregnant all the way to delivery, everything was perfect. We quickly adjusted to our family of 3 and life could not have been better! Mama and Dada is the greatest title that we could have ever been blessed with.
I remember feeling so ready to be pregnant again. Molly had just turned one, and we felt like it was time to start trying for another beautiful baby. Little did we know, this baby would forever change our lives in ways we could have never imagined.
We were overjoyed to find out we were pregnant with our second child. The day dreaming started. Dreaming of what Molly was going to think of her new sibling, if he or she would look like Molly, and what their first interaction would be like in the hospital. My mind immediately began to think of all of the positives.
Our 8 week appointment went great. We listened to his beautiful heartbeat (at that time we didn't know boy or girl) for the first time. Everything, as far as they could see, looked great. Pregnancy looked different the second time. I was excited for the next appointment but not counting down the days to it like I did with our first. Life was busy chasing a one year old around!
Ryne and I were sitting in the waiting room for our 12-week appointment when he looked at me and said, “are you nervous?” I responded with “yes a little”. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know what the 12 week ultrasound really looked at; other than to see if our baby was growing, and to listen to the heartbeat.
As we sat in the ultrasound room looking at the screen, we saw our baby and we heard his heartbeat. As time went on, our ultrasound tech wasn’t saying much. The room was quiet and all that was playing was the music in the office. When she started talking and explaining what she was seeing, I felt like I was in a nightmare. I heard her explain how the fluid on the back of our baby's neck was very thick and that it could lead to a miscarriage. After that, all I heard were muffled noises because in my mind I was telling myself, “this cannot be happening to us.” That appointment was the beginning of our nightmare that we couldn’t wake up from.
The drive home from that appointment with my husband was a quiet one besides the sound of tears. How were we going to tell our families, who are so excited for us? How am I going to sit here and hope every second I don’t miscarry? We arrived at my in-laws house to pick up our daughter, and they were just getting back from a walk. They saw our face and immediately knew something was wrong. Ryne started to share the bad news, as I couldn’t speak. He stayed strong for the both of us. I remember just wanting to hug our daughter and block everything else out.
The next appointment was the beginning of endless appointments with our maternal fetal medicine doctors. I was 14 weeks at our first appointment with maternal fetal medicine. We received bad news after bad news. The only thing that kept us going was the sound of his strong heartbeat.
At 16 weeks, I felt like we needed to know his gender. I felt that if we weren’t going to have much time with our baby, that we needed to connect with our baby as much as possible. We did an intimate gender reveal with Ryne, Molly and me at home. I was so surprised it was a boy. We had a boy name picked out already and from that moment we referred to him as our son, Cooper James.
From 14 weeks up until 24 weeks I was reminded of the option of terminating the pregnancy at every single appointment. It was exhausting and very frustrating to hear every time. We were doing everything we possibly could to save our precious Cooper, and I kept getting reminded that we have the option to end his life if we wanted to. That was never an option for us. We wanted to do everything humanly possible to save him. We saw a genetic counselor and had some testing done. Cooper James was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called WDR5-Related Disorder. At 20 weeks, I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end the way we wanted it to. After mentally getting torn apart week after week from appointments, that thought had started to creep into my mind that I couldn’t do this. How am I going to carry a baby to full term just to have him pass away? I felt like I was losing all hope in myself, the doctors, or a miracle.
I was standing alone in my bathroom at 23 weeks pregnant, further than most doctors thought I would make it, and my pregnancy was not at the front of my mind in that moment. All of the sudden, I get this powerful thought in my head that chilled my body. God was telling me that I could absolutely not terminate this precious baby and that I had the strength to carry him full term no matter what the outcome may be. At that moment, I felt a sense of peace that I hadn’t felt since week 12. I immediately felt more connected to Cooper, like we were a team that could conquer all of this together.
Throughout the second half of pregnancy, the doctors learned something new about him with every new MRI, ultrasound and echocardiogram. His tiny, precious body had so many things wrong. His hands were always in a fist; his stomach was hard to find, and wasn't in the correct spot; but the most life-threatening issues were his undeveloped lungs, along with not being able to locate his pulmonary veins. There are 4 pulmonary veins in your heart that you have to have to survive. They couldn’t find one. We had echocardiograms every 2 weeks to see if they could find them. They never could until the very last appointment before delivery. We had an ultrasound that day but not an echo. Our cardiologist was in the office and we had spoken to him one last time about delivery before leaving the office. Something made him want to look at Cooper's heart one last time. In that moment he told us that he thought he saw one pulmonary vein but couldn’t be sure. That was the little hope we needed going into delivery. It was the first bit of positive news we had received in several weeks and we were going to hold on tight to it.
The day we had been anticipating, but also dreading, was finally here. I had a scheduled C-section for April 8, 2024. Walking into the hospital that day was a feeling I have never experienced before. I had been keeping Cooper safe this whole time, and never felt like I was going to be ready to see him face-to-face. If only I could protect him forever. Getting wheeled to the OR was something I dreaded the entire pregnancy. The hallway was lined with several nurses and doctors. My husband had made a comment acknowledging how busy the OR floor was that day and our nurse looked at him and said "they are all here for you and your boy." That chilled our bodies. It was incredible to see how many people were prepared to do everything they could to save our son. All I remember saying was, "I don't want him out of me." I wanted to keep him safe forever. Safe from the potential surgeries he was going to endure, the tubes that were going to go into his body, all of it.
Cooper James Blanton joined us at 8:18 AM on April 8th, 2024. He was so beautiful. They did a delayed chord clamp, so we were able to admire how beautiful and perfect he was for as long as we could. He was here for 31 minutes on earth with us before he passed away. That was the day we heard the worst news of our lives. That our beautiful baby boy had gone to Heaven and was no longer with us.
I am still working through everything that followed that day after being told he was no longer here with us. I carried him out of the operating room and into recovery, where he was weighed and measured. Before they weighed him, my husband went into the waiting room where both of our immediate families were waiting to hear the news. My mother came back with him. We are both really close with our families. I just wanted to hug my mom. There, she hugged me and held our sweet boy for the first time. We then were taken to our room. The rest of the day was spent with our family admiring our beautiful boy. He was put in a baptismal gown and was baptized as we listened to our Christian music that helped carry us through the pregnancy. We shared our son with our family, but I never found myself taking my eyes off of him. All I asked is whoever was holding him, that they would sit right next to my bed.
The pain of leaving the hospital without your baby is something I wish nobody would ever have to experience. It is something I never imagined for our life. It is pain I never thought I would ever feel. It is unexplainable. From that day on our lives were forever changed.
Even though Cooper was here on earth for just 31 minutes, he has had such a positive impact on our lives. Although he is not here physically with us, we know that he is in Heaven watching over our entire family. Our goal is to honor his life through Cooper's Cuddles, and to help families that experienced the same loss that we did.
