Marissa Martinez Returns to Poteet Without Baby Averi After Emergency C-Section

 For Marissa Martinez, the moment she had imagined for months became a nightmare she could never have prepared for. At 36 weeks and three days pregnant, she went into labor expecting to meet her daughter, Averi Lanae, but instead woke from an emergency C-section and learned doctors had been unable to save her baby. The joy she expected was replaced by grief in a matter of hours.

The labor began suddenly, with painful contractions that became closer together within a short time. Marissa was airlifted from Poteet to San Antonio after the contractions progressed from roughly eight minutes apart to five minutes and then nearly every minute. She says there had been no warning that anything was wrong with Averi before the emergency began, making what followed even more devastating for the family. Everything had seemed normal until labor.

During labor, Averi’s heart rate repeatedly dropped from around 120 to 130 beats per minute to about 70 during contractions, according to the account shared by the family. Marissa was not progressing beyond four centimeters, and doctors became concerned about the baby and a possible placental abruption. Medical records shared with the family reportedly documented findings consistent with an abruption, including about 600 milliliters of blood clots, along with meconium-stained fluid and the umbilical cord around Averi’s neck. Those findings help explain the urgency for the family.

Doctors rushed Marissa into an emergency C-section under general anesthesia as they tried to save her daughter. When Averi was delivered, she was limp and not breathing. The neonatal team immediately began resuscitation, including ventilation, intubation, medications, fluids, and chest compressions, but they were unable to establish a heartbeat. While the medical team fought to save her baby, Marissa remained unconscious.

She eventually woke expecting to hold her newborn daughter and instead received the news every parent dreads. Yet she was given precious time with Averi afterward. Her baby remained in the hospital room with her, allowing Marissa to hold her, change her clothes, and take photographs. Those quiet moments became memories of a daughter she had carried for nearly nine months but would never bring home.

Then came another unbearable goodbye. When Averi needed to be taken downstairs for an autopsy, Marissa says the family was allowed to walk with her only as far as the elevator. They prayed over the baby before the doors closed, leaving Marissa to watch her daughter disappear toward the morgue. For a mother who had expected to leave the hospital with her child, that brief walk became one of the most painful moments of her life.

Now Marissa has returned home to Poteet without the little girl she expected to raise. She is also a mother to two other children, who still need her even as she tries to understand a loss that cannot be repaired. Friends have created a fundraiser to help cover funeral expenses and a headstone for Averi, with the campaign seeking $7,000. The fundraiser says donations will help Marissa honor her daughter while she grieves and begins taking life one day at a time.

Averi never got the chance to see her home, grow up, or make the memories her mother had already begun imagining. She was deeply loved before she was born, and Marissa now carries that love alongside the grief of losing her. There is no easy way to explain the silence left by a child who should have been coming home. For now, her family is trying to give Averi a farewell that reflects how wanted and cherished she was, while standing beside a mother facing an unimaginable goodbye.