Losing a child is something a parent should never have to experience. It seems to go against the natural order of things. Allison and Eric Blosfield from Lake Stevens, Washington, tragically understand this overwhelming loss.
Allison’s pregnancy was not a smooth one. Twice, her doctors asked if she wanted to terminate but she instead chose to give birth to Ethan. He lived to be 199 days old and died surrounded by his mom and dad.
Allison was told early in her pregnancy that there was a 77 percent chance her baby would have Down syndrome. This did not bother either parent. After a routine nuchal translucency test in the first trimester, the doctor told them the baby was developing a condition called hydrops. “Which is when excess fluid builds up underneath the baby's skin, and it goes throughout their body,” Allison explained. It is a serious condition that half of babies do not survive.
It was then Allison and Eric decided to name the baby Ethan. “At that point, they offered us a termination,” Allison recalled. “And I remember sitting there when the doctor said, ‘Here's your options. We can terminate.’ And I was just like, I could walk away. I could be done with this whole nightmare. Because the level of fear that you feel, the level of anxiety that you feel, and I was just like, I could be done. I could just be done and run away. And after I took a breath and thought it through, I was just like, ‘no.’”
Miraculously, at 18 weeks Ethan’s hydrops cleared up. Allison and Eric’s happiness was short-lived because they soon got more bad news. Ethan had a serious heart defect that would most likely kill him in the womb. “They told us that if he did make it to birth, survived birth, that it was likely he wouldn't live more than 24 hours,” Allison recalled. The doctor’s offered termination once again. “At that point, I was annoyed,” Allison continued. “I was like, ‘No, we're good. I'm scared right now, but we're keeping our baby.’"
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Ethan was born on December 13, 2022. He weighed 7 lbs., 6 oz. He fought so hard to live, even surviving an 11-hour open-heart surgery. When his health declined, Allison and Eric made the impossible decision to take him off life support. They held him on the roof of the Seattle hospital with a view of Mount Rainier and said goodbye.
“It was a very, very peaceful, calm experience the night Ethan died. And the experience that we got was so special and so beautiful,” Allison recalled. “And it's such a wonderful memory that we get to hold on to forever.”
To learn more about their story, watch this video.
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