Country singer Walker Hayes and his wife Laney open up about losing their newborn daughter in a new interview with People Magazine. (Getty Images)
Country singer Walker Hayes and his wife, Laney, are opening up about the day they lost their seventh child.
In a new interview with People Magazine, Hayes recalled the moment after the delivery when the nurse told him the couple's newborn daughter, Oakleigh Klover, didn't make it.
"‘What do I do?’" Hayes, 38, remembered thinking. ”‘When Laney wakes up, how do I tell her? How am I the one to explain, it’s a girl, but you know, she died?’ I knew that was just going to crush Laney.”
However, the star revealed that he was also told his wife's life was uncertain too.
“I just waited,” he explained to the outlet, adding that he "really just hoped that this wasn’t going to be the worst day of my life, even though it kind of already was.”
Thankfully, after an almost two-hour surgery, the surgical team was able to save Laney, who suffered a rupture of the uterus, which is a rare event caused by a tear in the organ's wall, according to BabyCenter. People Magazine reports that the lack of blood flow caused the baby to suffocate.
Laney, 39, said that the attending obstetrician described it to her as looking like "just an explosion."
The couple revealed that they initially intended to do a first-time home birth after "almost" having "several" of their children in the car. But that plan quickly changed when a midwife monitoring the labor in the pair's Nashville-area home, noticed that the baby's heartbeat faded and Laney was experiencing nonstop contractions.
“Oakleigh was in my abdominal cavity, and that’s what all the pressure was,” Laney explained, noting that they "didn’t know that then, obviously.”
After being rushed to the hospital by ambulance, an obstetrician ordered an emergency cesarean section, but Laney did not show obvious signs that she was hemorrhaging internally, People reports.
“I remember going to sleep hoping the baby was okay,” she recalled. “I had no idea I was in danger … I remember feeling like I didn’t think it was all going to be okay, but still hoping.”
Once she was fully awake, Laney and Hayes decided to heed the advice of a stranger, who'd lost a newborn four years before, and spend the rest of the day with their daughter's body. A few days later, when Laney was released from the hospital, the family had a burial for Oakleigh.
“It’s not easy to just say goodbye, even though she’s not there," Hayes told the outlet about leaving the cemetery.
The country singer says he's also coping with almost losing his wife.
“On the most random moment and on the most random days,” he shares, “I will think of how fragile she is, and I didn’t know that before, and that freaks me out.”
For Laney, she is still trying to be okay with her doctors' warning that she can no longer carry a pregnancy.
“I lost my last baby and now I’m done?” Laney says. “That’s hard.”
However, she notes that her six kids, ages 3 to 12, "are more than enough" to her.
“I do want them to know they’re wonderful and enough," Laney adds. "But, I can also be sad about missing Oakleigh, just like they are. It’s a process, and it will be forever."
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