Woman Says Son's Traumatic Birth Nearly Ruined Her Marriage — and Reveals One Line That Changed It All (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Rachel and Hunter Hughes with newborn son Beckham (left), Hughes family today.Photo:courtesy of Hunter and Rachel Hughes

courtesy of Hunter and Rachel Hughes

A mom on the other side of emotional hardship is sharing her experience and the wisdom she gained from it with other families in need.

Rachel Hughes, known as@HouseofHugheson social media, opens up to PEOPLE about candidly sharing her family’s story in the hopes that she can help other couples who unexpectedly find themselves navigating aNICU journey.

Rachel and husband Hunter met at 19 and were engaged within 7 weeks of their first date. After they were married, they set their eyes on getting their first home. Amid that journey, they were surprised with the news they were expecting their first child.

“We weren’t quite ready to have kids yet, but we knew we always wanted kids. So we were really excited when I was pregnant, even though it wasn’t planned,” she tells PEOPLE.

Just over halfway through the pregnancy, an unpredictable medical incident changed the direction the couple had in mind for their future, as they knew it.

“I had a perfectly healthy pregnancy with Beckham. It was relatively easy. I wasn’t very sick. We did a blood test to check for abnormalities at 10 weeks. He came back perfectly healthy. There was nothing abnormal about his DNA, my placenta, my uterus,” Rachel explains.

“On a completely normal day when I was 27 weeks pregnant, I left for work and forgot my laptop at home. I turned around and I was in an intersection, waiting for a break in oncoming traffic to turn left. As soon as I turned left, immediately my vision went out.”

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

“I was completely blacked out. When I woke up, the neighbor from the house next to the one I crashed into was carrying me out of my car. He heard the crash from inside his house, came outside and realized I was pregnant. He called 9-1-1,” she recalls.

While Rachel was awake and able to answer questions, she couldn’t think past the physical pain she was experiencing.

“I thought that I had shattered my body from the waist down. And I didn’t know how to express where the pain was because it wasn’t my belly. It was between my hip bones. I couldn’t figure out how to articulate it, so I kept screaming that my hips were broken.”

“They decided to send me to a level four neonatal intensive care unit, changing course mid-flight because I think everybody knew that I was going to deliver that day. The University of Utah has a level four NICU, which is the highest-intensity care with the best doctors,” she says.

Rachel was taken straight to the emergency room, where they were able to find her son’s heartbeat. They recommended a CAT scan next.

“They pulled me out of the CAT scan as soon as they got to my stomach, which made me realize something was wrong because that was before they got to where I was in so much pain. So I knew that they found something that caused them to pull me out of the CAT scan.”

“Every single siren on that floor went off. It was the most organized chaos I’ve ever experienced. Every person in the room was receiving direct orders from a doctor or nurse. I remember them transferring me from the bed to the operating table and I could feel the wind of how quickly people were moving around me.”

“They poured something all over my stomach. It felt like a gallon of milk, but now I know it was sterilizer. They had a gas mask on me and I ripped it off and started screaming, ‘I’m still awake! Don’t cut me!’ One of the anesthesiologists got down and whispered in my ear and guided me through it until I was all the way asleep. She was the most comforting part of the entire day. I’ll never forget her voice.”

Doctors had no solid explanation for what had happened to Rachel. They couldn’t determine whether her placenta abrupted, causing her to pass out and get into the accident, or if it abrupted as a result of the impact from the accident. Brain scans and other neurology tests showed no abnormalities. Her placenta was determined to be healthy. The why remains “one big mystery.”

What also seemed like a mystery that needed solving was navigating life as NICU parents after nearly losing their son. Rachel and Hunter were learning what it was to be parents as they were unsure of their son’s future.

“We were grieving, in part, because for the first half of the NICU stay, we didn’t know if he was going to make it. For the first seven days, they were almost certain he was going to die. Those were the hardest days I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Rachel recalls.

“I can’t even explain the grief of feeling like you’ve had a child, [only] to lose that child simultaneously. We were so fortunate that he lived. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost a child because that’s an indescribable pain.”

She found that while working through the grief and uncertainty, she and her husband were reacting and coping in different ways.

As Beckham’s stay in the NICU progressed, Rachel wanted to be there as much as she could be. Hunter was still working to provide for the family, however. When he did have free time, “he didn’t want to be at the NICU every day.”

“He could barely handle time there, emotionally. He was deep in the feeling of a lack of control. He was angry and sad.”

“We knew our marriage was suffering greatly. We were spending very little time together. Any conversations we did have, we were heavily disagreeing. We were both extremely sad,” she recognizes. “Once my son was born, maybe a month or so into the NICU, we were feeling extreme resentment towards each other.”

When Beckham graduated from the NICU and came home at around 5 months old, things “came to a head.”

“My husband came to me and said, ‘I love you, and I love Beckham so much, but I cannot have another child. I want to be honest with you and not blindside you about that when the time comes because I know that right now, and I want to be honest about it,’ " she recalls.

While Rachel appreciated that Hunter was “very clear in his choice,” they didn’t see eye to eye. The couple had previously talked about having as many as four children, and Rachel still wanted to pursue that vision.

“His biggest concern was that our child would be born prematurely again and also that they never found out why I passed out. He actually verbatim said, ‘If I impregnate you, I feel like I’m going to kill you. And I would rather lose you than be the reason our son loses you.’ "

She now realizes, “Those feelings are beyond valid and, honestly, quite wise for him to recognize. Hedidn’t want to risk thatagain. He also didn’t want to risk his son’s mom.”

“Although I understood his point of view, I had a deep desire from a young age to be a mom of multiple kids. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding my son, I knew I wanted more children. I think it was easier for me to say, ‘If you can’t give me that, then I will have to move forward in a different direction.’ Our futures looked completely different and we’d already been struggling so much.”

The two made the decision to separate in November 2019, but continued to coparent Beckham together.

“It was a very sad conclusion that we came to, without anger from either of us, but we wanted separate things and there didn’t seem to be a way around it,” she says. “During our separation, we were in communication and talking a lot. There was still a lot of love between us.”

In late December, Rachel informed Hunter she felt ready to file paperwork to end their marriage. A day later, he came back to her with a change of heart.

“I thought that was a really beautiful change in perspective. And we ended up getting pregnant a month later with our daughter.”

Today, she notes she would have done things differently, noting, “I would never give my husband up for anything ever.” Now, their daughter is “the love of his life.”

“I remind him daily that he only has her because of me,” she jokes. “We have the most beautiful marriage and most beautiful family. We couldn’t imagine life differently, and I did compromise with him. We met in the middle, and it’s been a beautiful journey since then.”

That renewed strength helped them move forward when they received Beckham’s cerebral palsy diagnosis in January 2020.

“It was one of the hardest days I’ve ever experienced in my life, just a lot of grief, a lot of sadness, mourning the life I wanted my son to have,” she says.

The couple decided to keep Beckham’s diagnosis to themselves for “almost two years.”

“When I was ready to share it, I knew that I wanted to create a video and start aYouTube channelto document his life. I really wanted to raise awareness forcerebral palsy, and I realized that cerebral palsy was nothing as I envisioned; it was nothing that I thought it was. I learned so much watching my son in his first two years,” she says.

“I thought cerebral palsy took your quality of life from you, that you really weren’t able to experience the world in a joyful way with a diagnosis, and I was so naive. I didn’t understand and I knew that most people in the world were just like me,” she admits. “They aren’t familiar with thedisabilityor with what life looks like. They aren’t familiar with the different stages and degrees of severity. I wanted to be able to show this beautiful quality of life that my son has and also give people the opportunity to witness that miracles take place.”

The couple is endlessly proud of Beckham’s progress, noting, “There are things that he can do that people predicted he’d never be able to do.”

Today, she shares a look at their family life on YouTube andTikTokand educates others with Beckham’s experience as a guide.

“If I can make one mom feel hopeful or less alone, then I want to do that. My husband was so supportive and so sweet about that decision. We haven’t looked back. It’s three years later now, so he’s 5 and doing amazing.”

In one of her TikToks, Rachel looks back at that difficult time when Beckham’s NICU stay seemed to break them down. She went viral sharing her truth and what she learned from making it out the other side.

“Looking back now, both of us understand why each of us processed the trauma the way that we did. Both of us love our son equally. I know that now, but people can judge, and I definitely did judge how my husband processed that. And my husband judged the way that I processed it,” she says.

“We didn’t understand each other, and I’ve talked to so many people who have gone through anything traumatic, especially when it comes to children, and men and women always seem to process it differently. I’m really so grateful that my husband and I never made a permanent decision about our marriage when our son was in the NICU.”

Rachel was overwhelmed with the response to the video, where she learned of other couples who had been through those hardships, as well as hearing from women who were still in the thick of it.

“We feel really grateful that so many people could relate and that now we’re out of that grief and those circumstances. We know we made the right decision. It makes me so grateful and makes me feel like everything we went through was worth it. If it helps one family stay together or one couple with each other and have more empathy — because at that time, I needed that so badly, to hear this was normal and not about us two.”

Hunter, Beckham, Rachel and Blakely Hughes.courtesy of Hunter and Rachel Hughes

Though it’s a hard time to look back at and difficult to revisit those emotions, Rachel made the video, with Hunter’s blessing, after talking to close friends who were dealing with infertility.

“Hunter and I are so grateful to know them because although that wasn’t our experience, I think that any grief surrounding children comes out of the same bucket. We’ve told them how this is temporary, the differences and how they process it. One thing that we try to convey to whoever we can is you do not make a permanent decision when you’re going through grief.”

She continues, “You do not make any permanent decisions about your marriage because your grief will pass. Most of the time, that grief lessens and evolves over time, as will your outlook and your understanding of your spouse. Having that reminder in them was really beautiful. I felt like people need to know this. They need to hear that sometimes, it’s not your marriage. Sometimes, it’s circumstantial.”

source: people.com