Wisconsin Donor Network Article

I believe that everyone is born with a destiny , and once it is fulfilled, our time here on earth comes to an end. There is no specific timeline and that’s why I think my daughter Amaya Elise touched our lives for only 6 weeks.



Amaya’s story began before she was even born. In June of 2006 I suffered a late term miscarriage due to an incompetent cervix. This means that as the baby got bigger, my cervix grew weaker and could not continue to stay shut. It was a very devastating experience. A few months later we conceived Amaya. Determined to carry her to full term, I went on bed rest in the hospital from February 2007 to May 2007. I went home on bed rest until Amaya was born on Father’s Day, June 17, 2007. At the beginning of the pregnancy we tried everything to keep her from coming too soon, but at 39 weeks, labor had to be induced because she was so big and didn’t want to come out! After 19 hours of labor and 4 hours of pushing, Amaya Elise was born. She was a whopping 8 pounds and 15 ounces.



The next six weeks were wonderful. She was a very good baby girl. She was very smart, and on time with all of her developmental milestones. The last one I practiced with her was smiling at 5 weeks. I sang a silly song to her, and she looked into my eyes and smiled. That was the beginning of our last week together.



The morning that Amaya turned 6 weeks she was cranky and wouldn’t eat, I assumed it was colic, a phase that babies go through from 6 weeks to 3 months where they are irritable and cranky. I went to work as usual and got a call that something wasn’t right, Amaya was straining to keep her eyes open and would not eat. We went to the emergency room where Amaya almost immediately became unresponsive. Her temperature was very high. She was put on a ventilator and taken to Children’s hospital. The next four days were numbing. It seemed very strange and untrue, everything that was happening around us. I can remember the first night there, I heard a baby cry out and I said, “That’s Amaya!”. But, It wasn’t. I never heard Amaya cry again.



When it became obvious that Amaya would not make it, some very nice people came to talk to us about organ donation. Immediately, I agreed. Those days that we spent in the hospital, we realized that we won’t be able to take Amaya to the zoo, and she won’t be able to play with her twin cousins. We knew that death was the end of the hopes and dreams and memories that we had yet to create with her. When Sarah and Tony from the Wisconsin Donor Network, explained the gift that Amaya would be able to give, I knew that a mother somewhere was waiting in the intensive care unit of a hospital watching her baby become more and more sick and that organ donation was the right thing to do.



Amaya died August 1, 2007 from Group B Strep Meningitis, which caused brain edema (Swelling). She was able to donate her liver, pancreas and intestines to a baby boy who was 9 months old at the time. Her lungs were too tiny to donate, and her heart was donated for research. Everyone has a destiny to fufill. Sometimes I wonder why my only child only lived for 6 weeks, but I know that her gift of life means that a part of her lives on. That makes me smile everyday.