Planning a funeral for your baby is one of the most traumatic things a parent will have to go through. During pregnancy, expectant parents have great hopes for their new baby. They pick names, decorate rooms, make plans for their baby’s future and do everything they can to
prepare for a new family member. The death of a baby destroys these hopes, fantasies and dreams. Accepting the loss of a life before it had a chance to begin is extraordinarily difficult.
The death of a baby after birth is a profound loss and one of the most difficult experiences for a mother/father/family will ever have to face. After the initial shock, they feel intense grief, sadness, anger, confusion, loneliness or even numbness.
On Monday August 23, 2021, Lily was admitted to the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore at 8:00 pm. The excitement of the birth of Baby West was in the air and family and friends could not wait to finally meet Baby West.
On Thursday August 26th, Baby West, who was Full Term and in perfect health, made his way into the world.
On August 26th at 12:28 AM, Tanner Curtis West was Born:
Weighing 8lbs 5oz
Height 21. 58” tall
On Friday August 27th in mid afternoon, Tanner Curtis West passed away in the arms of his parents.
Here is the Official Announcement from Lily and Tyler:
There’s no easy way to announce this, and there’s honestly just no right time either. Unfortunately, Lily and I regret to inform everyone that baby Tanner was not ready to come home with us. This was the most difficult thing for us to come to terms with. Tanner was in perfect health through the entire pregnancy. We know a lot of you have questions and as his family and extended family you all deserve the same information we have which I’ll do my best to explain everything. During delivery Tanner was facing towards the ceiling not towards the ground which prolongs delivery and makes this a little more complicated, after we got his beautiful head out unfortunately his shoulders became stuck at the pelvis and had to be vacuumed out by the Dr. and while doing this they also found the umbilical chord was partially against his neck. Because of all of this when they got Tanner out he had a lack of oxygen for a little over 2 minutes and could not sustain his own heart rate. It took the NICU team 25 minutes of chest compressions, and other help to get him to maintain a heart rate, again causing lack of oxygen. They also found that during the delivery both Lily and the baby had gotten an infection which made things that much harder in this situation. Tanner was very very sick. Due to the lack of oxygen for so long he suffered a severe brain injury with swelling and from all of the work the doctors had to do to keep him alive he ended up with acid within his blood and his organs began to fail him. They tried to test his body function with no response, they also tried to shine light at his eyes and his pupils did not respond.
The NICU team did everything they could, maxed out dosages and operations but Tanner was hooked up to every machine possible and couldn’t do anything on his own. At one point he started to breathe on his own without the help from the machine which looked to be a good sign until later that evening he suffered from what they believed was a seizure; however after the EKG came back clean they determined his heart rate had dropped again causing symptoms similar to a seizure such as shaking. It was at this point, around 3:00am on Friday, August 27th they told us we had to start having some difficult conversations and decisions made. Tanner is the strongest baby boy I have ever met, he held out for so long so he could meet his family and we could all tell him how much we love him. He became tired. Tanner told me the world is too messed up right now and the world wasn’t ready for him, he decided to go take care of our family and friends above because they needed him more. 08/27 Tanner passed peacefully in his mother and father’s arms and we stayed with him to ensure he was comfortable with his parents who loved him more than we could ever began to explain. We appreciate the immense amount of love, support, thoughts, prayers, everything. We told Tanner how many of you were routing for him and he loves all of you for it. He really was just too tired. We made the decision to let him go and not be in pain. We were able to get many pictures with the family and his prints and heart beat recording among many other things. The nurses went above and beyond to ensure Tanner will always be with us. I know this is difficult for some of you to read and it’s a lot to take in but with so many people still congratulating us and messaging and stuff it’s making things a little harder for us.
We love you all. This is very hard and so very unexpected when Tanner was in perfect health up until delivery. There’s a lot of things we do not have answers to yet. We will get our answers. These pictures are hard to post but thankfully after he passed mom and I were able to say our final words and tell him how much we love him and how much of a trooper he is. We wanted to make sure we got photos of him looking like the beautiful normal most perfect baby boy he is and he will forever be with us.
Again, thank you all so much for being here and continuing to be here. We can’t stress enough our gratitude and love.
If you took the time to read all this and sorry if it seems scrambled, thank you.
