Late nursing influencer Hailey Okula briefly met her newborn son in the fleeting moments before her sudden death, according to her husband, Matthew Okula.
“She was able to see him for a split second, and I’m always going to remember that,” Matthew told Fox 11 Los Angeles in an interview published on Wednesday, April 1. “It just came upon me so quickly and unexpectedly.”
Hailey, who was 33, gave birth to son Crew on Saturday, March 29. Within moments, she faced a medical complication post-delivery.
“We both looked at him and [it was] just Hailey’s personality. She said a little something because she saw how big he was. We had a quick little laugh there, she had a little tear on her face,” Matthew recalled. “Me and Crew walked out of the room and they said they were finishing up, she’ll be there in a moment. Literally a minute later, the doctor came in and let me know they’re doing CPR on her. I’m making the decision, ‘Am I going to the ICU with my wife or am I staying with my newborn baby?’ Not the decision we thought I’d be making.”
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According to Matthew, Hailey suffered cardiac arrest on the operating table.
“The doctors say it was from a very, very rare complication known as amniotic fluid embolism,” Matthew, a firefighter in L.A., added to the outlet. “There’s no treatment, there’s no way of diagnosing it. It’s so sad to think of other people having to go through what I’m going through right now.”
Former collegiate gymnast Hailey and EMT Matthew met in college before eventually getting married. After struggling with infertility for two years, they completed a successful cycle of IVF in April 2024. Hailey announced via Instagram the following September that she was pregnant.
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“She wanted to be a mom, so incredibly bad. She never put it on me, and the reality is it’s my fertility issues,” Matthew said on Wednesday. “We found out [at the time and] she grabbed me and said, ‘We’re a team. We’re getting through this together.’”
According to Matthew, he will always remember Hailey as he now raises Crew as a single parent.
“I know she would be up there telling me that ‘You got it, raise this kid, don’t baby him too much, make sure you do everything we talked about doing,’” he tearfully concluded. “She gave her life in the most noble way.”
