As everyone knows, my best friend of 15 years had finally gotten that positive pregnancy test that she had been longing for. The new parents were overtaken with joy and were so excited for what the future had to hold. As they began to grow their family, it only seemed fitting to name this precious baby after someone dear to their hearts. As Steve had lost his mother, Florence, at a young age, it only seemed fitting that the pair would name their baby in honor of her. And so their baby was named Flora Celeste Ballard.

However, over the next couple of months, with each visit to the doctor came bad news. At that point, Kyrsten was considered high risk, and the odds seemed to not be in their favor. Trying to stay as optimistic as a mother can in this time, more complications arose as her pregnancy progressed. Baby Flora's due date would have been 5/18/26, but sadly her little life was cut short. As I share my friend’s story, I ask that everyone stop and pray for them in their time of need and healing.

Testimony of the grieving mother:

“I found out at 3 weeks & 1 day that I was pregnant & we were so excited to be parents. I had spent so long wishing and praying to be a mom & that wish was finally coming true. We got a SneakPeek for the gender around 8 weeks & were so excited to find out we were having a girl. I had always dreamed my first baby would be a girl, and I was over the moon my dream was coming true. We got the NIPT done at around 10.5 weeks just to confirm, as SneakPeek has been known to be wrong.

At 12 weeks, I got a heartbreaking phone call. Yes, we were having a girl, but her NIPT results were not normal. She came back as high risk for Monosomy X, also known as Turner Syndrome. This means she only had 1 X-chromosome; her second sex chromosome was missing. We were also informed the disorder has a high miscarriage rate. Our hearts broke. We met with a genetic counselor the next day, and every appointment since has been more & more bad news.

We found out around 13 weeks that she had a cystic hygroma - a pocket of fluid under the skin behind the head/neck. The cystic hygroma was very alarming because it drastically increased the already high risk of miscarriage. Our next ultrasound was with MFM (high-risk clinic for those unfamiliar) one week later, and we found out the hygroma had grown significantly in just one week. They also saw some fluid build-up in one of her lungs and suspected a heart defect, but it was too early to tell on her heart. At every turn, her risk kept increasing, but we chose to keep fighting & to believe she would eventually improve.

Our next scan was our anatomy scan on 12/19. Things did not improve. We were informed her cystic hygroma had grown to a massive size, she had hydrops (extreme fluid build-up) in the lungs and abdomen. Without accounting for her fluid, she was less than 1st percentile for size, a drastic decline from the 20% she was at the last ultrasound. When measuring with all the fluid though, she was too big - so big that I had very little amniotic fluid surrounding her because our baby was taking up so much space in my uterus from all the fluid built up. Worst of all, she had an extreme and complex congenital heart defect. One half of her heart was virtually nonexistent. All of these medical issues led to us losing our sweet baby girl. We tried and fought so hard for our sweet girl, but she’s now our forever baby, Flora Celeste Ballard.

I will have to go on unpaid leave starting 12/29 as I will be out of PTO & bereavement pay. I can apply for short-term disability, but it will not even begin to pay out until 30 days after the leave starts - and then only at around 60% of my pay rate. Beyond going unpaid, I would still owe for our benefits (like health insurance) - which is costly due to Steve’s job not offering health insurance, so I pay for health insurance for us both. 30 days of benefits will run me at least $650 that I will owe, and therefore have to pay IN on top of not being paid. This doesn’t even include our bills like electric, water, car insurance, car payment, etc. And on top of all that, my deductible for insurance will reset January 1st, so I will be paying out of pocket for all of my therapy and medications, since my job only offers a high deductible plan, meaning we pay 100% of our medical costs until we hit our deductible. All of this means without outside assistance, I will likely have to return to work within 2 weeks of delivering our angel baby - which feels physically and emotionally impossible, but I’m not sure how else we will be able to survive financially.”

The family had no time to prepare for such a tragedy like this one. If there is any way you can find it in your heart to help so they don’t have to worry about finances on top of grieving their daughter, and so mom can have proper time to heal - both physically and mentally - they would be eternally grateful. They don’t like asking for help, especially with the holidays & a lot of families already struggling, so any help you are willing to provide will be cherished as they navigate a loss no human should ever have to experience.