When Millie Smith and Lewis Cann learned they would be parents, they were ecstatic. With several twins in their family, Millie had a hunch that she was expecting two children of her own, and her mother’s intuition was spot on.
She was certainly expecting twins, according to the ultrasound, but doctors could already tell early in the pregnancy that one of the infants wasn’t expected to live.
They learned that one of their daughters had anencephaly, a fatal disorder in which the fetal neurological system—the baby’s brain and spinal cord—does not grow normally, when Millie gave birth at 30 weeks pregnant.
Their little bundle of joy had only a few minutes to a few hours to survive, they were also informed.
Her parents wanted to give her a name before they could bid her farewell for good. Skye was the name they decided on.
Millie stated, “We knew Skye needed a name before she was born.” “I wanted her to be named during that time because I knew she would only live for seconds or minutes.”
“Skye” meant “somewhere we knew she would always be, that we could look up at the sky and remember our baby,” she stated.
When Skye died, we were holding her. The worst time in our life was this. That was the most heartbreaking heartbreak I had ever experienced. But the fact that she battled for so long to be among us makes me proud.
Skye was only alive for three hours, during which her parents admired her beauty and relished having her in their lives.
In order to assist the couple deal with the loss after her death, they were given a “bereavement midwife” and a “Daisy Room,” a place where parents may spend time with their child both before and after death.
But after the girl was gone, nobody mentioned her again. Millie was angry because she felt as though her kid had never existed.
“Most of the nurses were aware of what had happened, but as time passed, people stopped talking about Skye. After about four weeks, everyone acted as though nothing had happened, meaning the families around me had no idea about our situation,” the grieving mother recalled.
As her other baby, Callie, was still at NICU, another mother who had just had twins on her own told Millie how lucky she was for not having twins, not knowing of Millie’s loss.
“None of the other parents knew what had happened or anything about Skye. The comment was completely innocent and more out of humor…They weren’t to know that I did at one point have two.” Millie continued, “But the comment nearly broke me. I ran out [of] the room in tears and they had no idea why. I didn’t have the heart to tell them what had happened. A simple sticker would have avoided that entire situation.”
At this point, Millie thought of putting a sticker on the incubator that would say that one or more of the multiples had died.
Because purple is appropriate for both boys and girls, she noted, “I chose butterflies because I felt it was fitting to remember the babies that flew away.”
Her project has since expanded to become The Skye High Foundation, which funds the Purple Butterfly Initiative. It has so far assisted in getting the concept into hospitals across numerous countries.
A wide range of presents and accessories are part of the purple butterfly goods.
“In the end, I can’t stop this from happening, but it will be better if we can establish more support groups and use measures like the stickers. According to Millie, it’s the most difficult thing anyone has to cope with.
Callie, her second girl, turns seven today.
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