When Motherhood Takes You Somewhere You Never Expected to Go (Tucker's Story)

By Megan Hewson Author of Through the Grey Skies

Every mother holds hopes and dreams for her unborn child. We imagine bringing our babies home, watching them grow, learning who they will become, and building a lifetime of memories together. We rarely imagine a motherhood journey that will take us somewhere entirely different.

At 25 weeks pregnant, I went for an echocardiogram of my baby’s heart. At my 20-week ultrasound, the technician hadn’t been able to see the baby’s heart clearly because his back was facing up. My doctor assured me that nothing was wrong and that this was simply an extra check to make sure everything was okay.

But something just felt off during the scan. It seemed to take forever, and neither technician in the room would answer my questions. I told my husband that something was wrong. He held my hand and said, “You don’t know that.”

And he was right. In that moment, I didn’t know anything. But call it a mother’s intuition, because my eyes slowly began to fill with tears.

After the scan, we were asked to move to a counselling room, and that was when my husband became nervous too. The doctor came in and, because I was so far along in my pregnancy, didn’t realize that we didn’t know what was happening. She began talking about the multiple defects our son had in his heart.

“What are you talking about?” Mark stopped her.

Shocked, she realized that we were only learning this information now and that this hadn’t been a routine check at all.

There are many defining experiences in life, but this was the moment everything changed. The trajectory of my life was altered when this stranger told me, “Your son has congenital heart disease and will require open-heart surgery soon after he is born.”

The rest of the conversation is a blur. She was talking, and I remember that she had the kindest eyes, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. It was like being underwater, or living in an alternate universe, because there was no way this was happening to me.

We spent the rest of the day in the waiting room while they fit us in with maternal-fetal specialists, cardiologists, and genetics. These were all high-risk doctors I had never imagined I would ever need to meet.

My body and mind played ping-pong between being utterly devastated and completely numb. I wouldn’t let myself think about what it would physically mean for my baby to undergo open-heart surgery. All I could think about was how much I already loved him.

And I decided he needed a name that day.

We named him Tucker, and it means All Heart.

We had dreams for Tucker. We wanted to bring him home. We wanted to watch his brother become a big brother. We wanted birthdays, Christmases, scraped knees, laughter, but most of all, we wanted ordinary days.

We were told that after he recovered from surgery, he could have a fairly normal life. He would need additional surgeries and ongoing monitoring, but he would be okay. We could live with a life that looked different from the one we had imagined. We vowed to our unborn baby that we would take care of him.

Tucker was born on April 23, 2019, at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, a month early because of a placenta issue. I was able to see him for a few minutes before he was taken by ambulance to the Stollery Children’s Hospital with his dad.

Another defining moment was watching my newborn baby being taken away from me to another hospital when I couldn’t go with him because I had just had a C-section. I would have run after him if my body hadn’t been frozen.

That was the cruelest thing I have ever experienced.

I had no pain from the birth because of the medication, but the searing pain in my heart from having my baby taken from me is something I still cannot find the words to describe. All I know is that I would not have gotten through that night without my mom.

We spent the first week of Tucker’s life holding him and introducing him to our families while he stayed in the NICU waiting for surgery.

At eight days old, Tucker underwent his first open-heart surgery to repair his interrupted aortic arch, as well as an ASD and VSD, holes in his heart.

Walking our newborn baby to the operating room was the most difficult moment of my life up until that point. Once again, I was being separated from my baby when all I wanted to do was protect him and keep him safe.

But I wasn’t the one who could do that.

The surgery was successful, and Tucker had done better than expected. We were hopeful that he could recover and grow stronger before his next surgery. But less than a week later, another episode sent him back to the PCICU.

His second surgery had to happen much sooner than planned, the day after Mother’s Day.

Once again, we waited. And once again, we received good news. The surgery had gone well, and his recovery was going remarkably well.

We were just one day away from having his breathing tube removed, which meant we would finally be able to hold our baby again. We hadn’t held him since his first surgery on May 1.

We were so close.

Then, on May 24, Mark was just arriving at the hospital when he heard the code being called. He came around the corner to see Tucker’s room filled with people and equipment. He called me at the Ronald McDonald House and told me to get to the hospital immediately.

Tucker had gone into cardiac arrest.

They performed CPR on his exposed heart and were able to get Tucker onto extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO. Once the ECMO machine was able to take over the work of his heart and lungs, they allowed us to see Tucker.

I entered the war zone of his hospital room.

Medical supplies were scattered everywhere. Tucker’s stuffed animals had been thrown across the room, and his little socks lay bloodstained on the floor. His body was swollen beyond recognition.

It was difficult to believe he was still alive.

Over the next two weeks, the intensivists and surgeons worked endlessly to find a solution for Tucker’s broken heart. Tucker endured two more open-heart surgeries. Both were unsuccessful. He was too sick to qualify for a transplant or to go onto a ventricular assist device.

We were told that there was nothing else that could be done medically. It was time to prepare ourselves to say goodbye to the baby we had barely just said hello to.

I desperately wanted to hold my baby, but he was too sick to be held. I would have done anything to save Tucker. I would have given him my own heart, but it was no good to him.

That night, I sang to Tucker and read him stories. I read him the journal I had been writing to him every day before falling asleep in the chair beside him.

Things had gotten worse overnight, and we were given the opportunity to choose a time when Tucker would be taken off life support in a controlled way.

How do you even begin to make a choice like that?

After spending time in the full-size bed with Tucker, Mark called me over. Tucker was putting every ounce of strength he had into looking at us through his swollen eyes and squeezing our fingers.

Mark said, “Tucker is telling us it’s time.”

When things are changing quickly, in those moments, it can be hard to recognize the gifts. But choosing when they would turn off the ECMO machine gave us something incredibly important.

Time.

Time for our families to say goodbye.

Time for each of us to speak privately to Tucker.

Time for Berkley to lay beside his baby brother and hold his hand.

And a brief moment in time for us to hold our baby while he took his final breath.

It’s hard to describe the confusion I felt. Finally having my baby in my arms after five weeks of only being able to hold his hands. I had longed to hold him, but now I had to say goodbye.

I looked into the eyes that had once been so full of fight and determination, and I told him everything that was on my heart.

I told him how proud I was of him.

I told him how grateful I was that he had fought as hard as he had.

And then, with every broken piece of my heart, I told him it was okay to go.

Tucker passed away peacefully in the arms of the two people who loved him most.

That moment will be ingrained in my heart forever.

It was devastating. It was heartbreaking. It was raw.

And somehow, it was beautiful too.

I had only just become his mother, and suddenly I had to learn how to be his mother without him.

I wasn’t only grieving the baby I had held. I was grieving every version of the future I had already imagined.

The birthdays.

The Christmases.

The scraped knees.

The laughter.

The ordinary days.

The life we were supposed to have.

After Tucker died, I struggled deeply. For months, I fought depression. Some days it won, and other days I managed to get through.

Berkley was only two years old, and he needed his parents to be healthy, whole, and loving. I tried my best. But there were days when I cried all day long, and little Berkley would hug me and say, “Aww, it’s Tucker.” Even at such a young age, he understood how devastated I was.

Today, Berkley has grown into an incredibly compassionate and kind boy. He has a special bond with his brother in the sky, and he takes such good care of his twin sisters, our rainbow babies, Tessa and Presley.

I sought therapy and explored different kinds of healing, but the one thing I kept coming back to was putting my emotions onto paper. As the words flowed out of me, some of the pain seemed to release too. Eventually, those words became Through the Grey Skies.

I wrote this book because I know how desperately I once needed to hear from another mother who had lived through the unimaginable. I needed to know that someone else understood. I needed to know I wasn’t alone. I needed to know that I could survive this debilitating pain. And somehow, I have. I kept going.

Over time, I began to notice small moments of light through the grey skies. That is what I hope Through the Grey Skies offers to other parents who have lost a baby. Not answers, because there aren't always answers. Not a promise that the pain disappears. Instead, I hope it offers companionship. I hope a grieving parent reads my words and thinks: Someone understands. I am not alone. I can do this.

Losing Tucker taught me that grief and gratitude can exist in the same heart. Joy and sorrow can happen in the same moment. I can be devastated that Tucker died and deeply grateful that he lived. I can wish for more time and still cherish every second I was given.

For me, grief has meant learning how to carry Tucker with me as I continue forward. It means allowing myself the space to be sad when I need to, while also giving myself permission to be happy again. Tucker is always on my mind, like an undercurrent running through me, and over the years, I’ve learned to move with it. The hole in my heart has slowly begun to heal—by being both sad about what happened and thankful for what I had.

Tucker’s life was brief, but his impact has been profound. And through his story, I hope he continues to touch the lives of others.

If you would like to read the full story please visit my website at www.meganhewson.ca