Millie Smith and Lewis Cann found out they were having twin girls, but only one of them would
survive.
Smith gave birth to identical twins Callie and Skye on April 30, following a high-risk pregnancy that
lasted 30 weeks. Skye only lived for three hours.
Without her sister, Callie spent the night in the NICU incubator under the watchful eyes of her
adoring and distraught parents.
An exhausted mother of healthy newborn twins told Smith, in all candor, that she was “so lucky” not
to have two infants.
The statements devastated the new mother, and she was at a loss for words. Then she saw the
purple butterfly and knew that Skye’s legacy was to comfort other bereaved parents
Millie Smith and her partner, Lewis Cann, welcomed their first child in November 2015.
Smith, who is expecting a pair of daughters and whose family includes many sets of twins, reported
weeks after they found out they were expecting twins.
“During the scan, the doctor didn’t say anything. I was very excited and loved seeing the little babies,
but she was silent. Both Lewis and I immediately knew there must be a problem,” Smith said.
The CDC reports that approximately 1 in 4,600 newborns in the United States are born with
anencephaly; thus, the doctors broke the news that one of the babies had the condition.
Because of the severe nature of this birth abnormality, “almost all babies born with anencephaly will
die shortly after birth.”
The parents went forward with the extraordinarily high-risk pregnancy while knowing that one of their
babies would likely die shortly after birth.
Smith and Cann gave their daughters, who were born months later, the names Skye and Callie.
“We knew that Skye needed to have a name before she was born,” Smith said. “Knowing she would
only survive for seconds or minutes, I wanted her to be named during that time.”
The meaning behind “Skye,” she explained, symbolized “somewhere we knew she would always be,
that we could look up at the sky and remember our baby.”
On April 30, Smith went into labor at just 30 weeks along, necessitating a quick C-se
The pair was provided with a “bereavement midwife” and a “Daisy Room,” a space where parents can
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