“My husband and I looked at each other and shrugged. ‘And?’ he said. ‘I’m totally fine with that.’ I laughed. Of all the possible outcomes that had been offered to us, this was the first one that didn’t terrify me,” she writes in the memoir.
Even after learning of the genetic life-threatening abnormalities, Prince continued to refuse medical intervention. When she delivered the child via C-section on October 16, 1996, they were so happy, full of joy, until they saw the child.
“Pfeiffer syndrome type 2 is a genetic disorder that causes skeletal and systematic abnormalities,” she writes. “The premature fusing of the bones in the skull, sometimes resulting in ‘cloverleaf skull,’ in which the eyes are outside the sockets. The fusion of bones in the hands and feet causing a webbed or pawlike appearance … I learned all of this later.”
The baby was not crying, so the doctors tried to revive the baby. “They brought the baby over to us,” she writes. “He was curled on his side, gasping shallow little gulps of air. Because there were no lids to blink, his eyes looked startled and dry. I caught hold of his tiny hand, saying over and over, ‘Mama loves you, Mama’s here.’”The baby was having trouble breathing and they recommended a tracheotomy, but the child died 6 days later.
It took a lot for Garcia to write this book. “I’ve been making notes of my life but when it finally came time to write it, it took me back and I cried many tears,” she tells PEOPLE. “But I also think that it’s liberating.”
