What should have been a beautiful Christmas Day celebration with family turned into a nightmare for YouTube personality and mom Brittani Boren Leach, of San Antonio, Texas. When she laid her baby, Crew, just 3 months old, down for a nap at a relative’s house, disaster followed. “We are living a nightmare, and I’m dying inside,” she wrote on Instagram. “Please pray for my baby.”
Finding Crew unresponsive and not breathing, the YouTube mom vlogger and her husband, Jeff, rushed to Methodist Children’s Hospital, where doctors were able to establish that the baby had suffered unspecified catastrophic brain damage. While a ventilator kept the boy breathing for a time, the Leaches eventually had to let him go, deciding to give life to other babies in need by donating his organs.
After announcing Crew’s death, Brittani received messages of sympathy from female celebrities across the entertainment world, including Audrey Roloff, Brittany Aldean, Chelsea Houska, and Joanna Gaines of “Fixer Upper.”
Brittani garnered YouTube celebrity status by sharing her life as a 29-year-old mom of three small children. She shares all the major moments of her life with fans, from parenting tips to home-decoration techniques, not to mention big family-planning news like getting pregnant. When it came to Crew’s death, though, Brittani found herself on the receiving end of lots of affection and sympathy from fans and fellow YouTubers.
“Crew’s tiny earthly body is still with us, although I know he’s already dancing and playing in Heaven. We have some hard decisions to make over the next 12 hours, that no parent should ever have to make.”While Brittani didn’t specify what the “hard decisions” were, it later became clear she was talking about whether to keep her baby alive artificially through life support or let him pass. The other big decision was whether or not to donate his organs for other infants in need.
In response to her honesty about the difficulties of the family’s situation, she received an incredible outpouring of support online. Fixer Upper’s Joanna Gaines commented on Instagram: “I remember meeting your beautiful baby Crew in October- Praying for y'all right now.”
Her comment was seconded by Audrey Roloff of reality TV show “Big World, Little People,” who wrote, “No [broken heart]. I am praying as I type this. Lord Jesus please come. Let it be a miracle.”
“The huge amount of support that we have been shown is mind blowing to us, and we truly do feel all of the love and prayers being sent this way.”Posting a picture on Instagram of a drawing from the Harmony Design Shop that featured the Leaches on the right side and baby Crew with Jesus on the left, Brittani explained that the donation was going ahead. “Crew will be going into the operating room tomorrow at noon to potentially save 3 to 4 babies lives,” she wrote. “Tonight we are soaking up every moment with him by bathing him, holding him and loving him.”
A GoFundMe page set up for the family helped raise over $122,000 to make sure that “there is no need for the family to have to worry about anything other than the well being of their son and their family!” as organizer Corey Walton wrote.
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