Millie Smith and Lewis Cann were super excited when they found out they were going to be parents. Since there are a lot of twins in Millie’s family, she had a strong feeling that she was having two babies too, and her mom’s instinct was right.
The ultrasound confirmed that she was indeed having twins, but even early in the pregnancy, the doctors could tell that one of the babies might not make it.
When Millie gave birth at 30 weeks, they learned that one of their daughters had anencephaly, which is a serious condition where the baby’s brain and spinal cord don’t develop properly.
They were also told that their little girl would only have minutes to hours to live.
Knowing this, her parents wanted to name her before they had to say goodbye. They decided to name her Skye.
“We knew that Skye needed to have a name before she was born,” Millie said. “Since we knew she would only be with us for a few seconds or minutes, I wanted her to have a name during that time.”
The meaning behind “Skye,” she explained, symbolized “somewhere we knew she would always be, that we could look up at the sky and remember our baby.”
We were holding Skye when she left us. It was the hardest moment of our lives. I have never felt such deep sadness before. But I feel proud that she fought so hard to be with us for a little while.
Skye was with us for only three hours, and during that time, her parents admired her beauty and cherished her presence in their lives.
After she passed away, the couple received help from a “bereavement midwife” and were given a “Daisy Room,” a special place where parents can be with their baby before and after they die, to help them deal with their grief.
But once Skye was gone, no one spoke about her anymore. Millie felt like her baby had never existed, and that made her really upset.
“Most of the nurses knew what had happened, but as time went on, people stopped mentioning Skye. After about four weeks, everyone acted like nothing had happened, so the families around me had no idea about what we were going through,” the sad mother remembered.
While her other baby, Callie, was still in the NICU, another mom who had just given birth to twins told Millie how lucky she was for not having twins, completely unaware 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.”
This is when Millie came up with the idea of putting a sticker on the incubator indicating the loss of one or more babies in a set of multiples.
“I chose butterflies, as I felt it was fitting to remember the babies that flew away, the color purple because it is suitable for both boys or girls,” she explained.
Today, her initiative has grown into a foundation, The Skye High Foundation, that supports the purple butterfly initiative. So far, it helped spread the idea to hospitals in many different nations.
The purple butterfly merchandise includes a variety of gifts and accessories.
“Ultimately I will never be able to stop this from happening, but the more support groups we can set up and put things in place like the stickers the better it will be. It’s the hardest thing anyone has to deal with,” Millie said.
Today, her other girl, Callie is seven years old.
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