AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash – Crystal and Joseph Ossello have had challenges growing their family. They have a son, Tucker, who is almost four but wanted to grow their world even more.
After four years of fertility issues, five miscarriages, and failed attempts at in vitro fertilization, they were finally able to become pregnant naturally with twins. What was joy at first turned to tragedy when they lost their son Ethan at only eleven weeks. While his twin sister Harlow survived, it was with complications neither could have predicted. Harlow was diagnosed with anencephaly.
“She said that our daughter doesn’t have a chance of life, and it’s lethal,” said Ossello.
Ossello says her only goal from there forward was to meet her daughter alive, “I just tried to live every day I could in the moment, and I tried to focus on the fact that she is living now and I’m giving her life, and I’m going to try to concentrate on her life rather than her death,” said Ossello.
Ossello’s ob-gyn, Dr.Lacey Marks, works at Multicare’s Rockwood Clinic in Spokane. They knew each other before Osello’s pregnancy and became friends. Dr. Marks said that for babies diagnosed with anencephaly, life expectancy if they even make it to term, is brief.
“They’re only expected to survive minutes to hours,” said Dr. Marks.
However, Ossello knew her daughter was a fighter and had faith Harlow would be part of their family even if it was for a short amount of time.
“When the doctor said to me, ‘You may not meet her alive,’ I felt like she was wrong. I felt that I would be gifted that I just didn’t know how long it would be,” said Ossello.
Harlow was born on April 11th, 2023, “I remember just feeling so overjoyed that she was crying, and she was saying, like, ‘I’m here, Mom, you know, I’m with you.’ But then, at the same time, I knew that she wasn’t going to live. So it was like I was holding my breath.”
For fifteen and a half hours, the Ossello’s were a family of four; according to Dr. Marks, baby Harlow shattered the odds.
“For her to make it that long to meet her brother, her grandparents, be able to get family photos, be able to snuggle with her parents was so meaningful and so shocking that she made it, but that long it was really, really a special 15 hours,” said Dr.Marks.
Although she says she is grateful, Ossello says it will never be enough time, “I remember during my pregnancy I was so anxious to meet her alive and to be done with the pregnancy. And now I wish that if I could just have one more minute with her I would go through the whole experience all over again just to have five more minutes with our daughter.”
However, she says her daughter will always be a part of her, “Even though she is not here, I feel like she’s forever with me, and I learned each day how to live with her in a different way. Rather than live without her.”
