Photo: Katherine Wolkoff
Rising country starWalker Hayesand his wife Laney rejoiced last fall when they discovered that they wereexpecting their seventh child. Their lives already revolved around their six kids, ages 3 to 12, and the whole family was excited for the new arrival in late spring.
As he let the unbearable words sink in, all he could think about was Laney.
" ‘What do I do?’ " Hayes, 38, recalls of his thoughts in a candid interview with PEOPLE for this week’s issue. " ‘When Laney wakes up, how do I tell her? How am I the one to explain, it’s a girl, but you know, she died?’ I knew that was just going to crush Laney."
Yet the nurse kept talking, and the dreadful news kept coming. Hayes struggled to grasp what he was hearing now: that his wife’s own life was hanging in the balance.
“I just waited,” he tells PEOPLE, recalling those desperate moments when he didn’t know whether he would lose Laney, along with their newborn daughter. “I really just hoped that this wasn’t going to be the worst day of my life, even though it kind of already was.”
The surgical team’s heroic efforts saved Laney, and today, she has recovered from the physical trauma. But the couple is still in the early stages of grief for the daughterthey named Oakleigh Klover. They are sharing their story to express their gratitude for the family, friends and even strangers who have been accompanying them on their journey, as well as to help other grieving parents like them to feel less alone.
“Laney and I have cried a lot,” Hayes says, his voice breaking, “but one thing that makes me the happiest is howmuch love there has been around us. We’ve had the most remarkable questions answered and advice given from people around our neighborhood and in meet-and-greet lines. People walk up to me and tell me their life, and it’s like, geez, thank you for sharing. I don’t even know these people.”
One Life Lost, One Life Saved
The couple had originallyintended a first-time home birth, because “we’ve had several almost in the car,” says Laney, and they wanted to avoid that scary experience.
“Surgery just seemed to never end, and someone would continue to come to me and say things that I didn’t really understand like, ‘We may have to use this much to replace this blood,’ " he recalls. “That is when I began to worry for my wife’s life, and of course I’m freaking out.”
Once fully awake, she and Hayes made the decision to spend the rest of the day with their daughter’s body, at the encouragement of a stranger who’d lost a newborn four years before. The midwife had summoned the woman, an acquaintance, to the hospital to offer guidance.
“I didn’t know what was morbid, I didn’t know what was normal,” Hayes says. “But she began just walking me through the process. … It is a miracle she was there.”
Walker Hayes Family
“Please, Just Let Her Start Breathing”
That night,Hayes broke the news tothe couple’s other five children. “They all just handled it differently,” he says. “Some were really sad. Some were like, ‘Can I go back outside and play?’ It was tough to tell them.”
The graveside service and burial, a few days after Laney was released from the hospital, was “the worst,” says Hayes. “You just never expect that you’re going to be burying your child.”
Laney’s father, a woodworker, built the tiny casket and decorated it with an oak cross. Hayes and his three sons Beckett, 7, Baylor, 9, and Chapel, 11, served as the pallbearers; Cooper was the officiant.
Anguish Over the “What Ifs”
In the nearly three months since, Hayes and Laney have gone over and over what happened that day, anguishing over the “what ifs.” One comfort was the obstetrician’s assurance that Oakleigh wouldn’t have survived if the rupture had occurred at the hospital. “It is that catastrophic, no matter how you look at it,” Laney says.
Hayes, who hadhis first top 10 hit this yearwith “You Broke Up with Me,” wentback out on tourat the end of June. Performing, he’s found, has become part of his grief therapy. “Being on stage is a different experience now,” he says. “It’s almost spiritual.”
Laney, a stay-at-home mom who home-schools her children, is finding her healing just “being with the kids and Walker.”
“On the most random moment and on the most random days,” Hayes says, “I will think of how fragile she is, and I didn’t know that before, and that freaks me out.”
Katherine Wolkoff
Still, she is finding plenty of solacein a home full of life. Her six children “are more than enough to me,” she is quick to say. “I do want them to know they’re wonderful and enough.”
“But,” she says, “I can also be sad about missing Oakleigh, just like they are. It’s a process, and it will be forever.”
For more about Walker and Laney Hayes' heartbreaking story, pick up the latest issue ofPEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
source: people.com
