A North Carolina couple is facing massive grief after losing all seven of their babies after learning they were pregnant with septuplets. The brave couple rejected doctors’ suggestions to have an abortion and terminate the lives of one or more of the babies in an effort to save them all.
Lindsey and Steve Justice are college sweethearts who met at Wake Forest University, where Steve was a star football player who later went on to play with Peyton Manning during his days with the Indianapolis Colts. They had been married for five years and had little 4-year-old and 2-year-old girls but wanted to add to their family.
They struggled to get pregnant again and Lindsey eventually learned she has PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which makes getting pregnant more difficult. Lindsey eventually took fertility drugs in an effort to boost her chances and just when they were thinking it wouldn’t work, the couple got the news that Lindsey was pregnant.
During the six-week ultrasound, their doctor told them, “We have a problem” but the issue wasn’t an unhealthy baby — it was something different.
NBC has more on what happened from there:
The doctor thought Lindsey could be carrying as many as six babies, and asked the couple about what’s called selective reduction, terminating some of the pregnancies to help give the others a better chance at survival.
“He just said ‘this is dangerous. The human body is not meant to carry six-plus babies, and for your health and for the babies–their chances of survival, your best medical option is to selectively reduce.’ Steve and I didn’t even have to look at each other. That was just not going to be an option.”
The surprises kept coming. Lindsey’s eight-week ultrasound showed there were in fact seven babies.
“We knew at that point, reaffirmed, that this was from God. It’s not in our hands. It was a miracle, just a miracle. We were humbled to be counted worthy, although we’re very unworthy to carry such a responsibility.”
They knew they had to get to 23 weeks for the babies to have a chance.They named them; the first letter of each baby’s name together spells Messiah.
At 12 weeks they learned Lindsey miscarried one; they named Baby G Isaac.
At 16 weeks came yet another shocker.
“We were kind of joking they’re all gonna be girls,” Steve laughs. “And she did like a quick… and I was like are you kidding me? And she goes, they’re all girls.”
Sadly, at week 21, Lindsey’s water broke and she started feeling contractions.
The couple rushed to the hospital where Lindsey gave birth to the baby they named Mercy.
“We said goodbye to Mercy, and I was laying on that table for two hours trying to do everything I could in my power, which was nothing, to relax and stop having contractions, but it wasn’t God’s will,” Lindsey says.
It took just 10 minutes for Lindsey to give birth to the other five babies.
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“She was holding three of them on her chest and I was getting the next two and I just wanted it stopped. I wanted them to stay in there, ” Steve remembers. “I was sobbing and you’re like, can you just stop it?”
The babies survived about two hours.
The couple has absolutely no regrets no purposefully killing one or more of their children in an abortion.
Lindsey didn’t hesitate. “No. Oh gosh, I haven’t even thought about that question. No, I would do the past however many, 21 weeks, again and again and again if I had the choice.”
Both say they don’t think the full weight of the loss has hit them.
“We don’t have strength right now, we are broken, we are in deep mourning. We held each one of our six girls and said goodbye to them. They were all living. They all have birth certificates, they all have a first name a middle name and a last name.”
