The radiant Renee Golobic and Grady (4). Renee is also mom to Sophia Lela (died at 27 weeks in January 2010) and Adeline Grace (died 14 hours after her birth in March 2014).
All three of Renee's pregnancies were extremely different. She was very sick with her girls and says that she just had that feeling early on that they weren't going to make it. She was super ill all day and had a very difficult time with food. Around 25 weeks with Sophia she became even more sick. In the time her baby would have been moving the most she never really felt her. At 27 weeks she began spotting so they went to the hospital but couldn't find a heartbeat. That morning on the way to the hospital she told her husband that she just knew she had been carrying a dead baby for two weeks. He told her to stop, but she insists she just knew. After two rounds of Cytotec she began laboring heavily and Sophia was born within 90 minutes.
Renee and her husband decided to go to Italy to celebrate Sophia's due date. The day before they left she learned she was pregnant with Grady. Once they landed she realized she had a bump on her right side and began to think she must have an ectopic pregnancy. She felt uncomfortable but thought maybe it was just constipation from her prenatal vitamins. She went into the doctor and learned she had appendicitis, her appendix had ruptured and she had to have surgery. It was very difficult to communicate with the Italian doctors but she was told that it wasn't likely that Grady would live through the surgery or pregnancy. Yet Renee had a peace about it, the entire time, she just knew that Grady was going to be okay and was able to very much enjoy her pregnancy with him, she was never sick and he kicked and moved a lot. He arrived two weeks before his due date following a swift labor and an arrival just a couple hours after they arrived at the hospital and three pushes later.
Renee's pregnancy with Adeline was nearly as sick as her first with Sophia. She went in for a scan at 20 weeks and learned that she had fluid on her heart. They were referred to the Children's Hospital for monitoring, they took fluid from her heart and ended up doing in utero blood transfusions due to anemia. At 32 weeks they decided that she was better off outside than in. Adeline was delivered via cesarean and after her birth, they learned that she had Mitochondrial Disease and Lactic Acidosis. Her lactic acid threshold never came down and mitochondrial DNA when reproducing wasn't effective. After 14 hours, it was time to let Adeline go and her family is now in studies to hopefully learn more about what this is and why it happens.
Renee's views on the death of her children is quite unique. She has resolve that they simply were not meant to be here even if she doesn't have the understanding of why or what their place or purpose is. They didn't want to keep their daughter alive just for them to have her and notes that being in the hospital for her whole life wasn't something that they wanted for their daughter. Because of this they asked the doctors to not go to extremes to keep her here, thinking instead that if she wanted to be here and was meant to be here she would be.
Renee wishes that people were more open in talking about death, particularly the death of children. She notes that it is something that has happened to her but does not define her. She wants her son to know that it's okay to talk about death and that it's okay to keep on living when someone you love dies.