A Utah family is grieving the loss of a young mother, who died of a heart condition days after Christmas and just over a week after giving birth to twins.
Morgan Aubrey Hughes, 23, died Dec. 28 at Utah Valley Hospital in Provo after welcoming son Hudson Samuel Hughes and daughter Georgia Elise Hughes on Dec. 19, with her husband Samuel Craig Hughes, also 23.
The couple married in 2023.
“It just doesn’t feel real,” Samuel told KSL-TV 5 in a joint interview with his late wife’s siblings.
“Morgan was amazing. She was the best wife, the best daughter and nobody loved more than she did. She loved her Savior, Jesus Christ and we will do our best to honor her through our faith in Christ. The only choice is to believe in an afterlife, otherwise there is no hope.”
In a separate interview with NBC News published Friday, Jan. 3, Morgan’s father, Brian Hodson, explained that his daughter’s delivery went “extremely smooth” before she began to feel sick days later.
After vomiting and fainting, she went back to the hospital where she was diagnosed with postpartum cardiomyopathy, also known as peripartum cardiomyopathy.
John Hopkins Medicine defines the rare condition as one that “begins sometime during the final month of pregnancy through about five months after delivery, without any other known cause.”
“It’s been devastating. We certainly weren’t expecting this at all,” her father continued.
According to the American Heart Association, postpartum cardiomyopathy can be hard to detect because it “can mimic those of pregnancy, such as shortness of breath and swelling in the feet and legs.”
Hodson said becoming a mother was Morgan’s dream.
“She’s always wanted to be a mom and has loved babies forever,” he said. “She was known as the baby whisperer, even when she was young.”
“That’s all she wanted in life, was to be a mom,” Hodson added. “She would have loved them more than anything.”
In a GoFundMe account organized by Lone Peak Fire Association where her father is a captain, Morgan was remembered as “a kind and loving soul whose greatest joy was becoming a mother.”
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The twins, who were born prematurely, remain in the NICU at Utah Valley Hospital, but are expected to be home later this month.
Samuel visits the newborns twice daily and says caring for them has kept him going.
“The twins are where I feel my peace that she’s there. She is helping the twins,” he said.
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