Meet Evie & The Williams
All my life, I wanted nothing more than to be a mother. It was my life-long dream. Because of my severe prematurity at birth, and the medications that I had to be on to keep me alive, it was always a question of mine and my family's whether or not I could have children. In 2020, I became pregnant with Evie! After my 20-week anatomy, we found some things wrong with Evie. She was found to have a cleft lip and palate, which then led us to other scans/testing. The other scans had shown more and more problems with Evie and we eventually decided to go forward with genetic testing. At 28 weeks in utero, Evie was officially diagnosed with Trisomy 13 through an amniocentesis. Although we knew that the possibility was high, we were still hit with sadness. We were told that Evie could be stillborn or only live a few hours to maybe a week after birth. We knew that we wanted to give Evie the absolute best chance that we could give her. We began to search the internet for families like mine. Through that, we found so much hope, so much love, and guidance.
Evie was born into the world on February 6th, 2021. Her journey began and it changed my life forever. She fought so incredibly hard to be with us every day. She was so spunky and sassy, and loved to give her nurses/doctors a hard time when Mom and Dad weren't around. When she was just 10 days old, she got a terrible gut infection called Necrotizing Enterocolitis. We thought that we were going to lose her! I begged God to keep her with us a little while longer. I knew her time was not up and she needed to keep fighting. So, He did! She got to live about 7 more weeks until she got sick with the same gut infection that was even more aggressive than the first time.
She continued to fight. But slowly, her body wasn't able to keep up with the severity of the infection. After many talks, the hospital, the hospice team, and the transport team all worked together to get Evie home on April 1st, 2021. It had been my goal for Evie's entire NICU stay. She got to spend two beautiful days home where she was surrounded by family, her dogs, and so much love.
Evie gained her beautiful angel wings on April 3rd, 2021. Her 56 days of life were nothing short of a miracle. She taught me so much about hope, about fighting for the most vulnerable/tiny humans, and about how to love someone who couldn't stay. We love and miss her every single day of our lives. We honor her in whatever we can because she deserves to be remembered.
