When Louis and Millie learned that they were pregnant with twins, they were happy beyond words. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Twins were fairly common in Millies family but the though of bringing 2 beautiful babies into the world filled the entire family with happiness.
There were some issues, however, and the doctors gave them some bad news. It seems that the children, who were still not born, suffered from a condition known as anencephaly. It causes a part of the brain to remain underdeveloped. Although they were still excited over the prospect of having twins, they were told that most babies who had this condition would not make it to birth and if they did, they wouldn’t survive long after birth.
As you can imagine, this difficult news would be hard to bare. When the twin girls were born, one of them died. Her name was Skye, and it happened soon after the C-section. Although it was crushing, they rallied about Callie, the surviving daughter.
It was then that one mother who was visiting the NICU said something that caused Millie to burst into tears.
You’re so lucky you haven’t got twins
Millie ran from the room in tears. She would have given anything to have both of her little girls.
They wanted this type of accidental comment to stop, as it was a common occurrence when one of the babies dies during multiple births. That is when they came up with the purple butterfly.
None of the other parents knew what had happened or anything about Skye. The comment was completely innocent and more out of humor… They weren’t to know that I did at one point have two. But the comment nearly broke me. I ran out [of] the room in tears and they had no idea why. I didn’t have the heart to tell them what had happened. A simple sticker would have avoided that entire situation.
Both Millie and Louis are vigilant about raising awareness for this cause, known as the “Skye High Foundation.” The purple butterflies have now shown up in NICU units around the world.
Even though they could not bring Skye back, they gained comfort from knowing that they were helping other parents to avoid such a remark.
“Ultimately I will never be able to stop this from happening but the more support groups we can set up and put things in place like the stickers the better it will be. It’s the hardest thing anyone has to deal with.”
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