courtesy of Missouri Historical Society
Years from now, once their daughter is old enough to understand, Lara and Ben Gillham of St. Charles will tell her a story of loss and love, sickness and health.
The story will begin in December 2018, when the couple’s 6-month-old son, Jackson, died of a rare heart condition. The months that followed were full of grief and sorrow for his parents. When Lara became pregnant with their second child, in 2019, she and Ben were excited—but also afraid. Would the new baby suffer the same tragic fate as their lost son? As COVID-19 became a concern, they began worrying about bringing a new baby into a world that was changing by the minute.
Their anxiety grew still more ahead of the due date when Lara’s doctors expressed concern about the baby’s small size and the pandemic meant that Ben could no longer accompany his wife to appointments. “That was hard to stomach,” Lara says. “Going alone was really difficult.”
Staff at the Mercy Birthing Center knew the Gillhams’ story and tried to provide additional support. The couple’s doula, Jen Jester, was especially helpful in designing a birthing plan and preparing Lara for contingencies. On April 19, baby Violet was born. Although the pandemic prevented the usual rites and gatherings celebrating a new life, it didn’t take the joy out of Violet’s arrival.
“We’ll be able to tell her one day that she was born during an unprecedented time and that it was a unique situation,” Lara says, “but we made the best of it.”
