The husband of nursing influencer Hailey Okula opened up about the heartbreaking final moments he spent with his wife before she died from complications from giving birth to their first child.
Matthew Okula and his wife, who had been struggling to have a baby for two years, shared a “quick little laugh” over how big their newborn was minutes before the new mother went into cardiac arrest, Okula told Fox 11 Los Angeles on Wednesday.
“A minute later, the doctor lets me know that they’re doing CPR on her. I’m making the decision, ’Am I going to the ICU to be with my wife or am I staying with my newborn little baby?’” the new dad said, holding back tears.
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Hailey Okula quickly succumbed to an amniotic fluid embolism, a complication in which leftover material from a mother’s womb blocks her blood flow.
Amniotic fluid embolism is the leading cause of death during and just after childbirth, contributing to 7.5% of all maternal deaths, according to the National Institutes of Health.
For Hailey – an ER nurse known as “Nurse Hailey” to her followers – it was a tragic end to a two-year quest to have a child that had inspired hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
“She wanted to be a mom so incredibly bad,” Matthew Okula, a firefighter for LAFD, told Fox 11.
When Hailey was finally able to share the good news in September, she told her followers: “Being able to say that we are pregnant is indescribable.”
“From my infertility problems, to my husband’s infertility problems, to us having to create a special probe because we both carry the same genetic disease, lotsssss of meds and lots of money, the journey has been hard, but so worth it,” she wrote at the time.
“Words cannot convey the depth of the loss I feel,” Okula wrote alongside a heartwarming video collage of his and Hailey’s relationship.
“I will never forget the moment I broke down, apologizing for the toll the process would take on her. She held my face, looked into my eyes, and said, ‘We are a team, and we’ll get through this together,’” he wrote.
Hailey had devoted her online career to inspiring and supporting other healthcare professionals.
In 2019, she launched the RN New Grads project, which offers guidance and resources to nurses starting their careers.
“She was gorgeous, smart, hardworking, passionate, trustworthy, and, above all else, unbelievably loyal. For nearly 13 years, she stood by my side in the hardest of times, loving me endlessly, even when I felt undeserving of that love. She was my everything,” Matthew wrote in the hours after her death.
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