The birth of a baby is usually a joyous occasion, however, for a couple in Texas, it was a much more heart-wrenching experience. Diane Aulger from The Colony, Texas, purposefully gave birth to her fifth child two weeks early so that her dying husband, Mark, would have the chance to meet his baby girl before he passed away [1].
A Dying Husband’s Wish
52-year-old Mike Aulger was diagnosed with colon cancer last April. Following surgery to remove the cancer, doctors gave him six months of precautionary chemotherapy, which badly damaged his lungs.
In November, he began having trouble breathing, and by January he had become sick enough to be admitted to the hospital. He learned that the chemotherapy treatment he had received had resulted in pulmonary fibrosis, but the family was optimistic that he would recover.
The reality, sadly, could not have been further from the truth. On January 16, just as Diane was getting ready to give birth to the couple’s fifth child, the couple learned that Mark’s condition would not improve, and he was given a mere five or six days to live.
His last wish was to see his new baby before he died, so Diane was scheduled to be induced on January 18. Mark was able to hold his baby girl, Savannah, for 45 minutes the day she was born. He was so tired that over the following couple of days, he was only able to hold her for a minute or so at a time, before slipping into a coma on January 21. Mark died two days later.
“I brought her home the night before he fell into the coma,” Diane said. “It was just me and Savannah when he passed away.”
Mark is also survived by the couple’s first two children, aged ten and seven, as well as Diane’s two other children who are fifteen and thirteen.