Laura Streeter is a Mom

An inspiring story of heartbreaking loss, sustaining faith, and, finally, a dream realized. Streeter family photos are courtesy of The Farmers Daughter Photography.

This holiday season will be immensely joyful for Laura and Drew Streeter because of two gifts they received in September. 

Those gifts are Vivian and Violet, twin baby girls who are healthy and adorable. 

Being a mom has long been Laura’s dream, and her and Drew’s journey to becoming parents has been marked by devastating setbacks and the kind of loss that might prompt some couples to give up rather than face more pain. They persevered though, lifted up by friends and family, an exceptional medical team at Mary Greeley, and, ultimately, their unwavering faith. 

A Dream Delayed

“Being a mom is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, ever since I was a child,” said Laura, who works in Mary Greeley’s human resources department. 

She and Drew married in December 2021. Laura became pregnant with their first child in February 2022, but that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage around 11 weeks. 

“That miscarriage experience was my first introduction to Dr. Ann Gessner and Doran Clinic,” said Laura. “I think we had taken maybe a month off and then in June found out we were pregnant again. That time around six weeks I had lost the pregnancy naturally, and again back to Dr. Gessner at Doran Clinic to work through a several-week process with lots of blood work and tests. At that point, it felt pretty defeating and there were no answers.” 

Laura became pregnant a third time but had another miscarriage. She continued to work closely with Gessner to figure out why she wasn’t able to carry a pregnancy to term. 

“I found out that I had Leiden Factor V. It’s a blood clotting disorder. Most doctors don’t necessarily think it’s the cause for miscarriages; however, they do find it a lot in reoccurring miscarriages,” she said. “We worked on a plan where I would start taking baby aspirin. Really for the rest of my life. It would be a smart idea knowing that I could have a blood clot, but specifically when it came to pregnancy and trying to get pregnant, that baby aspirin would be a good regimen to do.” 

Despite the miscarriages and the Factor V diagnosis, Laura remained focused on becoming a mom. 

“I have a really strong faith and I really felt that God had a plan for me, and I felt lucky to have been able to carry babies, even if it was only 4 to 11 weeks,” she said. “And I just felt like He wasn’t done with us and our story, and I didn’t think we needed to give up or go down a different route just yet. I thought there was more in store for us.” 

That proved to be true. Laura became pregnant a
fourth time. 

Daphne

“I wasn’t super hopeful. I think that took a really long time, probably past 20 weeks, to think that this was real and happening,” said Laura. “But that was a very normal pregnancy. Thankfully, everything went very well. Every appointment was normal. She was an active baby, and when I got to 35 weeks things changed.”

Laura had learned about Count the Kicks, a program Mary Greeley’s Birthways unit promotes to help moms’ monitor the activity of the baby they are carrying. At 35 weeks, Laura sensed a decrease in her baby’s activity. 

“It was a Monday morning; I got up, came to work just as planned. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. I felt her a little bit, but I just felt like she should be more active than this. I ended up in tears in my office, just in a little bit of a panic, because I didn’t want to call over and be a burden, and it be nothing,” she said. 

A coworker encouraged her to see Gessner to give herself peace of mind if nothing else. Laura followed the advice and tests showed that the baby was hardly
moving; and when she did, her heart rate dropped. 

Laura was admitted to Mary Greeley for monitoring. An ultrasound was performed to watch the baby’s breathing patterns, movements, and heart rate. Something looked off with the heart and lungs. The heart looked enlarged and there was concern about fluid in the lungs. 

A decision was made to have Laura deliver at Mary Greeley and then transport the at-risk baby to Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines. A team including Gessner, McFarland Clinic pediatric hospitalist Dr. Laura Hufford, and a team from Blank was on hand at Mary Greeley. 

“I think there were 20 people in that operating room,” Laura said. “My husband was there with me, and I felt good that he could hold my hand. She was out within two minutes and went to the next room right away and they resuscitated her.” 

Nurses would take pictures with Drew’s phone and go to Laura’s room to show her. Eventually, Laura was reunited with her newborn. 

“I couldn’t hold her. They were still working on her, but I could see her little head and stare at her features,” she said. “Dr. Hufford told me how cute she was and pointed out her fiery red hair, like her dad’s. And they all asked me what her name was. I told everybody her name was Daphne.” 

Daphne was immediately transported to Blank. Despite everyone’s efforts, Daphne lived for just 48 hours. 

“We got to baptize her, dress her for the first time, change her diaper, and just hold her and stare at her. And when it looked like she was kind of starting to go on her own, they took away the breathing tube and all the machines,” said Laura. “I think she had a smile on her face the whole time. But we got about an hour with her, and then she took her last breath in my arms.”

A Baby’s Impact

“Whenever someone loses a baby that they’ve longed for, or for that matter a child of any age, I feel like that person has to get through the pain by not forgetting that special child, to survive the grief by remembering that child,” said Gessner. “I think she has to rely on her faith, her family, and her friends. And Laura had an incredible inner strength to keep going forward and to keep hoping. I think the majority of women and families keep going because they have that hope.” 

Despite her short life, Daphne’s impact was huge. 

“She is everything to me. She changed my life,” Laura said. “She made me a mom and that was my first experience, and it was a different one. I didn’t get to parent her the way that most would hope to parent, but her life was so impactful. I know that the doctors and nurses here were so impacted by her. She was a fighter and she had such a tiny life, but it was so huge and it continues to be so impactful to everyone around her. I’ve been a person of faith my whole life, but I really believe that I didn’t even know what faith was until I knew her.” 

That faith kept Laura and Drew going. And it was rewarded. 

“I had to battle with the realization that I’m a mom and nothing will ever change that, but maybe I don’t get to parent here on earth in that capacity or be a mom in the way that I thought I would be. And so, part of my grieving process for Daphne was really grieving all of that too, as well as the experiences that we missed out on with her and a normal happy birth and newborn experience,” said Laura. “So, I had to grieve that. I had to grieve her. And then, I had to grieve the possibility that this just might not be in the cards for me.” 

Good News

Still processing the loss and leaning heavily on their faith, the Streeters began 2024 with cautious optimism. Early in the year, they learned Laura was pregnant once again. She was six weeks into the pregnancy and at work when she “started having weird symptoms and I decided to see if Dr. Gessner could see me.”   

“They got me in right away and did an ultrasound. There was one baby on the screen with a good heartbeat,” said Laura. “They were exactly as big as they should be—the ultrasound tech and I were super excited to see that. And she focused on that baby for probably a good couple of minutes, and then she said, ‘I’m going to just look at everything else and make sure there’s nothing wrong in here.’”

All of a sudden, there were two babies on the screen. 

“At kind of the same time, we both said, ‘Is that twins?’” said Laura. “And she said, ‘There are two and they’re both alive.’”

Jessica Benzing, an obstetrics nurse on Birthways, was part of the team when Laura delivered Daphne, and she was there for the arrival of the twins. She and Laura knew each other for years, having both grown up in Marshalltown, and she made a point of being there for Laura when Daphne was transported to Des Moines. 

When Jessica heard that Daphne had died, “I just started crying. I was so angry and I couldn’t accept that. Why Laura? Why her? She had had so many losses before Daphne. You grieve for your patient, but you also grieve for the baby because I played a part in that baby’s life.” 

They connected frequently at the hospital, often talking about Daphne. 

“I think as moms grieve, one of the things that they have to work through is that nobody’s going to remember my baby because there aren’t new memories being made,” said Jessica. “So, I just always let her know, ‘You can talk to me about her if you want to.’ And we talked about how much she looked like Drew, and how red her hair was, and how cute she was.” 

It was another encounter at work when Laura got to tell Jessica that she was once again expecting. 

“I was just choking on my tears. And she’s like, ‘And it’s twins,’” said Jessica. “I made sure I was going to be there on the day she delivered. It’s so exciting to be able to be there in kind of the next chapter of their story.” 

Given everything she’d been through the past two years, Laura was understandably a little scared when she was brought into the Birthways’ operating room. But this was a team who knew her, who knew everything she’d been through to once again be at this point. 

“The people and the care here is just unmatched,” said Laura. “I have a team of people here who are invested in me and these babies. I don’t feel like there’s anything that they wouldn’t do for us. I feel safer here than anywhere else.” 

This time, everything went as everyone hoped and on September 12, Laura, Drew, and a team at Mary Greeley welcomed Violet and Vivian into the world. 

“Every day with Vivian and Violet is an answered prayer and a dream come true,” said Laura. “I’m overwhelmed every time I look at their little faces—both resembling Daphne in different ways—by how good God has been to me.”