YouTuber Brittani Boren Leach confirms death of 3-month-old son after he was found unresponsive on Christmas Day
YouTube star Brittani Boren Leach has confirmed the tragic passing of her three-month-old son Crew, days after he was found unresponsive while sleeping on Christmas Day.
Leach, 29, had first shared that her son had been admitted to the hospital on the day after Christmas and detailed how she had found him not breathing.
"I don’t have any words right now, other than to desperately ask for your prayers," she wrote. "Not the kind that you say 'I'm praying for you' and don't, but the kind where you fall on your knees and beg God for a miracle."
"While at a relative’s house last night, Crew laid down for a nap and when I went to check on him, he was not breathing. We are living a nightmare, and I’m dying inside. Please pray for my baby. This can’t be real."
In a series of posts that followed, the 29-year-old said doctors were working on getting Crew stabilized and were preparing him for an MRI to check on his brain function, and that she "can't explain to you what this feels like".
On December 27, she confirmed that the infant had passed away and thanked all her supporters for their outpouring of love.
"Crew’s tiny earthly body is still with us, although I know he’s already dancing and playing in Heaven," she captioned the post, where she and husband Jeff Leach can be seen tenderly holding Crew as he's hooked up to several machines.
"We have some hard decisions to make over the next 12 hours, that no parent should ever have to make. We need prayer now, more than before, specifically prayers for peace and clarity on the decisions that have to be made, and for our hearts, the pain is unbearable. I keep thinking that I will wake up from this nightmare, but I don’t."
She said they were making footprint imprints, a family handprint tree, and a fingerprint charm in his memory and that her son's organs would be donated so they could save other lives.
"It’s all just too much," she wrote in a post where she's sitting on the floor with her head burrowed in her legs. "All of it. I know God has a plan for this, but I’m really really mad at him right now. I cry behind the bathroom door while Jeff holds me, because in the room over everyone else gets to laugh and go on with their lives, and it makes me so angry."
"Running tests on my sons body to see how his organs are functioning before they take them. Pumping breastmilk just to pour it down the drain. Hearing a baby cry. Seeing a baby his age. Shopping Nordstrom for the dress I’ll wear to my son’s funeral. It’s all too much."
Over the past two days, Leach has been regularly posting updates on her page and revealed doctors were preparing to take him to the operating room to harvest his organs, which would save 3 or 4 babies.
"Our sweet Crew went to be with Jesus today," she wrote late on December 30. "I rode on the bed with him to the OR, with Jeff walking beside me as the surgical team pushed us through the halls. People lined the halls to pay their respects to our little hero and then we said the hardest goodbye of our lives."
"Right now Crew is dancing and playing in Heaven with Jeff’s brother, great grandparents, a little brother I never met, and some very special little boys. And one day we hope we to meet the 3 or 4 little lives that he has saved. But right now there’s a big hole in my heart and my arms feel empty."
A GoFundMe page that was started by Cory Walton to raise donations for his treatment has raised over $116,000 of a stated $100,000 goal.