The 30-year-old mother died one day after giving birth to twins.
She had twice beaten cancer, once while pregnant, and had just delivered 33-week-old twins.
The babies were teeny-tiny, each weighing about 3.5 pounds, but they were healthy and pink and their mother was overjoyed.
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Jamie Snider, 30, had a C-section last Thursday, then a radical hysterectomy just to make sure that every bit of cervical cancer was gone from her body.
Things seemed fine, her family said. Until the next morning, when Jamie woke up with a failing heart. She was rushed into surgery, but died on the operating table.
The father is bereft, said a family friend. “He’s emotional. He’s having a hard time. He’s definitely scared,” Christine Oliver told InsideEdition.com Thursday. “He’s alone with two tiny infants who are both fragile.”
The infants remain hospitalized in Palo Alto, Calif. Dad Heath Coigny is keeping watch over his wee ones, Camila and Nico.
Jamie had been diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer, lost an ovary, recovered, and then became pregnant. At the beginning of her term, the horrible disease returned, and Jamie underwent intensive treatment at Stanford Medical Center, her friends said.
She moved into the hospital in the last months before her delivery so she could be constantly monitored. The cancer appeared to be in remission.
“Everything was going really well and she had pretty much gotten out of the woods,” Oliver said.
But 24 hours after the twins arrived, her heart - perhaps overburdened by all her body had been through - just gave out.
The twins’ father is waiting for them to be released from the hospital, then he plans to take them all to New Hampshire, where he will move in with his sister, her husband and their two young sons.
Coigny is working “towards establishing a stable and loving environment to raise his infant son and daughter,” reads a GoFundMe page established to help cover the babies’ medical bills and the family’s relocation costs.
“We would be eternally grateful for any donations to help the Coigny family provide Camila and Nico with the funds needed to start their lives on solid ground,” the site says.
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