56-Year-Old Woman Dies 7 Days After Giving Birth to Twins

56-year-old Lisa Swinton McLaughlin wanted children more than anything, but died on Jan. 4 from a “bowel obstruction”, just 7 days after giving birth to twin boys.

Lisa McLaughlin lived in Baltimore and was in “significant pain” when she left the hospital and went home on New Year’s Eve. She thought the pain she was experiencing in the days after giving birth was caused by the incision of the cesarean section she’d had.

Her husband, Mike McLaughlin said that he and his wife had been trying to have children for decades. They had tried a variety of fertility treatments and were ecstatic when she became pregnant and then delivered the twins, albeit prematurely. He told Omaha.com.

“She was just on cloud nine. That's the happiest I've probably seen her in my life. She wanted what every other woman had, and that’s children.”

According to the website;

The pregnancy was uneventful — she got gestational diabetes, but her doctors in Maryland controlled it.

“She was very, very careful,” Mike said. “She did exactly what she was supposed to do.”

She started a month of bed rest in early December because the size of one twin was causing a blood-flow problem.

On Dec. 27, she gave birth by cesarean section to sons Jordan, 3 pounds and 3 ounces, and Dylan, 3 pounds. They were premature but healthy.

The babies remained in neonatal intensive care, and she went home on New Year’s Eve, though she still had significant pain. She thought it was from the surgery incision.

On Jan. 4, she died of a bowel obstruction.

Lisa, of course, had expected to see her babies grow into adults. Death, Mike said, “wasn’t even in her vocabulary.”

Instead, she only got a glimpse at motherhood.

“She held the babies and was able to stroke them and love them,” her husband said.

The now widowed and single day says he has hired a nanny to help care for the infants and is planning to move to Nebraska to be closer to family.

So sad. May God console him and all her loved ones. Amen.