For Presley

A child’s first birthday is a day that’s supposed to be a memorable one, filled with smiles and unforgettable moments. A celebration of their first year of life. Unfortunately for my wife Lauren and I, we’ll be experiencing that milestone much differently than most parents. There won’t be a big party. There won’t be presents. And there won’t be pictures of our one-year-old son smashing cake with chocolate frosting all over his hands and face as loved ones sing Happy Birthday.

All those things stopped being possible one year ago today when Lauren and I lost our son Presley to stillbirth, becoming one of the 24,000 sets of incredibly unlucky parents to suffer that fate in 2019. For the rest of our days, this day will serve as a reminder of the worst day of both of our lives.

This certainly isn’t an easy story to tell, but I’ll share my experiences from that day (and this past year) in hopes that it helps others who have also experienced the loss of a child, and of course, to honor my son.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

“I’m afraid the baby has passed.”

Those are the six words that shattered my wife and I’s world one year ago. It was just one day before our son Presley’s due date. A day that began with my smiling wife Lauren waking me up at 6:30 am to tell me she was having contractions. A day that quickly descended into a tragic nightmare.

My wife had a scheduled doctor’s visit that morning. After calling to tell them about the contractions, they recommended we come in before heading to the hospital. No problem, we thought. So I grabbed the bags and we headed out, excited that we’d soon officially become parents.

But our excitement quickly turned into despair not long after arriving at the doctor’s office. The nurses couldn’t find our son’s heartbeat. The next 10 minutes seemed like 10 hours. My wife and I weren’t saying it out loud, but our collective fear and panic quickly filled the room. Finally, her doctor came in and we were immediately ushered to the ultrasound room. It was there that the doctor confirmed there was no heartbeat, and our son had died.

I burst into tears and held my wife, who was in shock and disbelief. Our expected day of happiness had suddenly grinded to a complete halt. The grief was only beginning, yet we still had to go to the hospital so Lauren could deliver the baby. As the next steps were explained to both of us, my wife insisted she would not deliver naturally. The thought of going through delivering her now dead son was too much for her to bear. I agreed wholeheartedly. The doctor called ahead and let the hospital know it would be a C-section. I told Lauren that’s exactly what would happen. It broke my heart that she had to go through that after losing him, and honestly, at that point in time, I would’ve killed someone if they upset her in the slightest way or she didn’t get what she wanted. We were given some time alone and informed we had the option of walking out the back door of the doctor’s office when we were ready to leave. Obviously, that’s what we chose to do. Probably for the best. Who wants to walk through a lobby of people staring at you and wondering why you are both in tears?

I don’t much remember driving Lauren to the hospital that morning, but somehow we got there. At that point, I was operating on pure instinct. Once she was checked into her room, I immediately requested a grief counselor. We had several hours until the surgery for the C-section, and it was important to me that we both discuss the next steps of what was about to happen. These particular things can end marriages and I wanted to be proactive. I was in survival mode and scared for our future. I can’t remember the counselor’s name off the top of my head, but she helped us tremendously. We just experienced a tragedy that we were both still trying to process, and my wife still had to be operated on. We really needed that conversation to happen when it did. The day was in a downward spiral, and while it didn’t take any of the pain away, it did provide some clarity.

Lauren’s C-section was set for 4 pm. The nurses made me eat something since I was on an empty stomach and would be in the OR with Lauren, so I managed to get down a half of a turkey sandwich before I began to make some phone calls. Each one more and more painful because every person that answered was expecting to hear good news, not that we had lost Presley. Eventually, I had my sisters spread the word to other family members and friends, then sent out some text messages when the calls became too daunting.

As we inched closer and closer to Lauren’s surgery time, I began to worry about her. “Am I going to lose her, too?” I thought to myself. “Please don’t let anything happen to her,” kept repeating on a loop in my head. At this point I was just an exposed nerve: stricken with grief, overwhelmed with anxiety, and fighting to pull it together. Thankfully, I was allowed to be in the operating room by her side, where I held her hand. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to handle sitting in a waiting room by myself at that point in time. I would’ve been climbing the walls. Time seemed like it ceased to exist from the moment we learned of Presley’s death, and there were still more hurdles to clear.

We were going to meet our son.

I’ve been through a lot in my 40 plus years. I lost my mother to Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma when I was 11 years old. Losing her at that age affected me greatly, but I was young and still didn’t really understand the full extent of death. At 28, when I lost my father to the spinal cancer known as Chordoma, that proved to be a far worse experience than my mother’s death. At that point, I fully understood what death was, as I watched him slowly lose his battle and wither away in the final weeks under Hospice care. I was in the room when the coroner carried him out of the house in a body bag. An indelible image forever etched in my memory bank. The kind of shit that takes years off of your life. The kind of shit I’ve just plowed through my whole life I suppose. Seven years later, I lost my stepmother after she suffered her second major stroke, which she never regained consciousness from and was eventually pulled off of life support. And a few years after that, I lost a good friend to Walter Payton’s Disease. All of these deaths were very painful in their own way. Yet none of them were even remotely close to the pain I felt in that hospital room that afternoon as I saw my son for the first time.

My God did that fuck me up.

Presley Quint Steczkowski was born at 4:39pm. He was nine pounds and 13 ounces, 20.5 inches tall. He was a big boy and he was beautiful. The nurses did a great job, swaddling him in a blanket, dressing him in a matching onesie and little beanie cap. I picked him up out of the carrier they wheeled him into the room on, held him in my arms, looked at him, and I cried my eyes out. The pain just washed over me.

It was agonizing.

Almost paralyzing.

I just wanted so badly for him to be alive, to hear him cry, to feel him move in my arms, to see his eyes. I told him how sorry I was that he didn’t get a chance at life. I just didn’t want to let him go. It was the most excruciating pain I’d ever felt in my life. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Just a few days earlier we listened to his heartbeat and the doctor told us he would be arriving any day. We had just finished setting his room up. I stenciled whales, sharks, fish, and boats on the walls. Placed all his baby books on the bookshelf. Hung up all his baby clothes.

How could this happen?

My wife did everything right. She was amazing for every single second of the nine months she carried Presley. And man, pregnancy fit her like a glove. It made me fall in love with her all over again. Every one of her check ups came up aces. I know, because I was right there next to her at every single one. None of this made any sense, but there was nothing we could do. Our son was gone, and as confused and distraught as we were, we’d eventually have to somehow pick up the pieces and crawl our way back to some semblance of normalcy.

The path to normal wouldn’t be starting for quite some time.

My normal throughout those first few days resembled constant tears, and anger, and a rage boiling inside of me. It was passing out on the couch from exhaustion after going home to feed my dogs, waking up in tears and driving back to the hospital, screaming the words to the new Killswitch Engage record while crying the entire way. It was my chest feeling like it was about to burst from anxiety as I battled getting through each day without falling to pieces. It was an absolute motherfucker. And I just wanted to get my wife out of the hospital and back in our home.

After the first 24 hours had passed, there were still two more phone calls that I had to make. The first was to the funeral home to set up Presley’s cremation. Obviously this is not something you ever plan for, but I had to call and figure all of this out. Plus, I wanted to shield my wife from as much of this shit as possible and take care of what ever needed to be taken care of. This was (and will forever be) the toughest phone call of my life. Bless the wonderful woman who had to speak with me that day. I tried my best to keep it together, but saying,”I need to cremate my son” led to me breaking down on the phone. It was gut wrenching to say those words, but she helped me through it all and couldn’t have been more kind or patient with me. Turns out, my fears of having to incur a big expense were quickly put at ease as I was informed they do not charge anything for a infant’s cremation. I was beyond grateful to hear that news.

There was still one more pressing call: my boss, who also happens to be my wife’s boss. As many of you know, Lauren and I both work for Cumulus. Lauren is the co-host for The Blaine Fowler Morning show on 96.3 WDVD. I work for WJR 760 AM as a traffic reporter, board operator, and on-air contributor for the Detroit Lions pregame broadcasts. Lauren welcomed her listeners in on every step of her pregnancy. From the first official announcement, right up until her final week. I mean, the gender reveal was a plane flying over downtown Detroit with a banner that said “It’s a Boy.” They all knew Lauren was due any minute, so I knew that people would soon be asking questions, flooding inboxes and social media to ask about Baby Stets. Our boss insisted that we shouldn’t worry about anything work related, but I was adamant that it would be harder to handle if we didn’t get out in front of it.

So, as many of you may remember, this led to crafting a statement that Blaine read on the air that Friday during the show. Friends and family across the country all tuned in as Blaine delivered the message for us. He welcomed taking on this herculean task for both of us, and he handled it perfectly. We are forever grateful. We listened from Lauren’s hospital room that morning surrounded by my sister Theresa, my Uncle Mike and Aunt Ginny, Lauren’s father Warner, and his wife Thomasin. This served as our funeral for Presley. And by Lauren and I being so open with her listening audience, unexpectedly, we ended up helping so many people who had lost a child. Suddenly, caller after caller came on the show to share their condolences, and starting sharing their own stories of loss, too.

As isolated as we felt in all of this, we realized that we weren’t alone at all.

“We are in a rare club, my friend. Sad and rare. Thinking of you. Heart is broken.”

That was a text I received from former UFC fighter Chael Sonnen, who I’ve gotten to know pretty well over the years from my time covering MMA for SiriusXM and other outlets. He and his wife Brittany had lost their newborn daughter Blauna just a few days after she was born back in 2016. I expressed my condolences back then, but didn’t quite know or understand what to say. But I sure understood after losing Presley. And he was right, we are in a sad and rare club. The craziest thing about it is that you usually don’t know who else is a member until you yourself become one. Chael is a public figure and his story was well publicized, but the stories I can’t share because they were told to me in private were from fellow colleagues, contemporaries, friends and even some family members, too.

People do not talk about this shit.

They just don’t.

But some people will talk to you if you suffered the loss of a child like they have. So it’s very sad, and also kind of strange in a way. But it’s also very comforting to speak with them because they know exactly what you are going through.

Lauren and I were truly overwhelmed with the amount of love and support we received. Family and friends who dropped everything to fly or drive in from all different parts of the country (Chicago, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts) to spend time with us. Friends, loved ones and co-workers who sent us flowers and gifts. Cumulus, who sent a gigantic bakery platter to us. The Lions PR team, who had a member of the staff drive over with a card and flowers, as well as a card from head coach Matt Patricia. The phone calls, texts, tweets, and messages, from friends, colleagues, contemporaries, former colleagues and neighbors just blew both of us away. As did the kind gestures like invites to dinner or offers of dropping off home cooked meals.

All of that kindness gave us light in a very dark time.

And the nurses. I can’t forget to mention amazing nurses of Beaumont Hospital’s Family Birth Center. Darlene, Kaitlyn, and Madison. They were so incredibly kind, caring, and compassionate. They really made a difference in what was just an impossible time for us to navigate. Before we left the hospital, I requested to speak with the head of the nursing staff, Kathryn, just so Lauren and I could tell her in person how amazing her staff was. We also took the time to nominate them all for a Daisy Award, which is an international program that recognizes the extraordinary work of nurses. They are special people. We will never forget them.

What really happened to Presley?

I’m sure that’s something that many of you may still be wondering about. Lauren touched on it in a recent episode of her podcast Tough Broads, but I’ll also explain it here. We had to wait almost two weeks to get the autopsy report on our son. It was nerve wracking, but we felt it was important for both of us to know exactly happened to him. In some cases, we learned, a cause of death isn’t discovered. But for us, we were given the answers. Presley died of pneumonia. That’s what’s written on his death certificate, but it goes much deeper than that.

Here is where it gets difficult to fully grasp. The cause of pneumonia was an infection caused by the bacteria known as Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly known as BT. It is a soil-dwelling bacteria that is used as a pesticide in organic farming. It’s not supposed to be harmful to humans, but somehow it got into one of Presley’s lungs, and caused an infection which ultimately led to his death. An infant doesn’t have a strong enough immune system to fight off an infection like this, so it killed him in a short period of time, which was likely a day or two before we learned of his passing. Lauren’s doctor said he had never seen anything like this. Something so rare, he said, that he equated it to being struck by lighting.

We were relieved that it was nothing we had done wrong, but it was still an extremely difficult thing to fully comprehend. A perfect pregnancy for nine months that suddenly ends due to something my wife’s doctor had never seen before in his entire time practicing medicine. Like, why the fuck did this have to happen to our son? Why couldn’t he have been born a few days earlier? We kept asking these questions over and over, trying in vain to make sense of it all.

But there’s no making sense of what happened to us, which is why we’re still asking those same questions one year later, and why we will be asking them for the rest of our lives. And even if we could somehow make sense of it all, it wouldn’t bring Presley back. Sometimes life, for whatever reason, is just unbelievably cruel. We’ve been forced to learn how to live with this tragedy, and we have already begun to do so because we’re both fighters who won’t let it break us.

One year later

This past year has been very difficult. Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day were all as difficult as you can imagine. But the one great gift that Presley gave both Lauren and I is that he brought us closer together. We go to therapy on a regular basis and have also attended some support groups for infant loss as well. Both have been incredibly helpful to us. Obviously, things have been more difficult with COVID-19, but thankfully we’ve been able to have phone therapy sessions during this time.

Grief is a very powerful force, and it can bring you to your knees. We’ve had plenty of instances where either one of us breaks down on a given day, sometimes both of us at once. But the important thing is that we always communicate about it, so neither one of us has to go through it alone. Sometimes I cry as soon as I mention his name. Same with Lauren. We have pictures of him that the hospital’s photographer took for us so we’d have a keepsake. But I haven’t looked at them in almost a year. Because I can’t do so without crying. It’s just too painful. However, I will force myself to look at them today.

His room is still exactly the same. The books are still in the bookcase. The stuffed animals are still on the top of his dresser. His closet is still filled with his clothes. And his stencils of sharks, whales and boats are still on the walls. We had an aquatic theme going on. His middle name is Quint. That would be Robert Shaw’s character from Jaws. I mean, are Lauren and I hip parents or what? One day we will sort through it all, I suppose, but we’re still in no rush to do so. It’s just so painful to be in his room and see all the outfits he was supposed to wear, and toys he was supposed to play with.

Hopefully Presley will have a brother one day that we can pass all of his things to him.

About that.

Yes, Lauren and I are still trying to start a family. We’ve been trying to get pregnant since January. So far, no luck. Right now we are in the middle of having consultations with fertility doctors about our next steps. Honestly, it feels like insult to injury to have to go through all of this shit after losing Presley. So we can definitely file this under life being unbelievably cruel again. These last seven months of trying to conceive have been very difficult on us, especially my wife. But we remain determined to have our family. And let me just tell you, my wife is a fucking warrior. Seriously, she is the toughest and bravest woman on the planet both physically and mentally. For example, when we got home from the hospital last year, I helped her with her bandages from the C-section and getting in and out of the shower, and putting the special stomach wrap on after she got dressed etc. After two days, she no longer needed my help, and she told me she wanted to try to conquer the steps. Well, she did so with no issue because, of course she did.

And she’s been conquering mental hurdles every single day since. She has her moments, of course, as do I, but she keeps pushing forward and it never stops amazing me how strong she is.

Look, it’s always going to be hard for both of us. There’s just no getting around that. And right now with us struggling to get pregnant again, it’s even harder on certain days. There are just so many triggers. Some days can truly be like trying to traverse a minefield. When we see someone we know make an announcement on social media, welcoming their newborn, of course we are happy for them, but at the same time we can’t help but wonder, “Is that ever going to happen for us? Will we ever get to experience that? Did we lose our one chance when we lost Presley?”

It’s almost impossible not to ask these questions or feel these emotions. They always find a way to creep inside your brain. But I always try my best to keep things positive because I do believe we will one day have our family.

If we’re being honest, though, we totally took for granted how the birth of a child is often referred to as a miracle, but I promise you we never will again. Now that we’ve experienced losing our child just one day before his due date, we understand completely that a miracle is exactly what birth really is.

As my wife and I try to get through this difficult day, I’ll leave you with this quote. It’s from Lions wideout Marvin Jones Jr. He spoke to the media for the first time last week about losing his six-month-old son Marlo last December. And his words really hit me hard when I heard them because I found they were so relatable.

“I don’t think you can ever really fully cope with it — I have my days — but at the same time, there are thousands and thousands of people who reached out to me about their experiences.”

He’s 100 percent right. You can’t ever really fully cope with losing a child. And you definitely have your days. Today is certainly one of them.

Happy Birthday, Presley.