The Flanery Family

They say babies can hear voices from the outside the womb.


Henry Steven Flanery must have known us all. He knew his sister, Evelyn, and her voice of song. He knew his other sister June, and her screams of laughter. He heard his dad, Steven, take aim and fire at a box that exploded blue powder, announcing his gender to the world of Facebook. He heard the families cheers of joy. Henry knew us and he knew our love for him. Above all, he knew his mother, Jenna, the most.


Henry never felt oxygen in his lungs. He never felt cold air. He never knew what it was like to cry. He didn’t know hunger or pain either. The only world Henry knew was a warm space where only love existed. Henry weighed 5 pounds, 1 ounce. He was 18 inches long. Henry had light brown hair and a small dimple on his chin when he became an angel.


During the early hours of May 13th, Jenna started to throw up. She started a giant contraction that wouldn’t let go. A doctor knows this means the placenta tore away. Usually there is bleeding with this but Jenna didn’t bleed. Her pain and condition worsened and she went to the hospital around 6 a.m. By the time Jenna arrived at the hospital, the doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat. Henry passed away due to placental abruption and lack of oxygen.


There are three risk factors women generally have when the placenta tears away from the uterus – the woman is on drugs, the woman has high blood pressure, or the woman suffered trauma. Jenna did not have any of these. The five surgeons could not tell us why her placenta tore away at 8 months. We will never know why.


Jenna delivered Henry with ease. She was able to hold Henry and see his face. Then she started to bleed. The blood wouldn’t stop. Doctors had to put Jenna under while they worked to stop the bleeding. The surgeon explained she tried everything she knew to stop the bleeding. It was like water flowing out of a sink. Jenna lost 8 liters of blood. She lost as much blood in a non-pregnant body. Not only was Jenna losing blood from her uterus, she was also filling up with blood in her body cavity. In order to save Jenna’s life, surgeons removed her uterus. The surgeon took the uterus to a table and searched everywhere for a hole. Jenna had to have been leaking somewhere. The surgeon couldn’t find the hole. This is another answer the doctors could not give us. We don’t know why Jenna bled outside of the uterus. We will never know why.


The surgeon told us in 25 years of practice, she has never seen a hemorrhage this catastrophic.


Jenna lived. Henry never cried that day. He was saving his mom.

-Julie Burton