CLARKSON, Mich. – A growing family from Clarkston has really been through the wringer during the COVID pandemic.
Jen and Andre Laubach were separated from their newborns the first couple of weeks of their lives due to COVID. The couple recently had another baby, a girl named Liv. They say this time around, despite the precautions, was much smoother.
“It makes me really thankful. That I’m able to have this bond with her (Liv) but it also makes me sad that I’ve missed that with the boys,” said Jen Laubach.
Laubach gets emotional when she reflects on the birth of her twin boys, Mitchel and Maksim in April 2020. The pandemic had just started, both Laubach and her husband, Andre, were at home battling COVID.
Andre Laubach said, “I remember I was laying in bed and could barely move. I was coughing so hard and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and if I was even going to survive. Then Jen yelled from the other room, ‘I think my water broke’.”
She had to drive to the hospital alone and was isolated while there. It was 20 days after the twins’ birth, that the couple finally met their boys in person.
The newborns were healthy and never tested positive for COVID.
Time passes and the couple is expecting again, this time with a girl.
“When I reached 32 weeks in this pregnancy I was really scared, you know, afraid what was going to happen. And it was just at that time that all of this media was coming out about omicron,” said Jen Laubach.
On February 25, 2022, at Beaumont Hospital Troy, Liv was born.
“Liv’s birth really, truly did heal me from everything that I went through with the boys for me,” Jen Laubach said.
Now, as a family of 5, the couple couldn’t be more grateful.
Andre Laubach said, “The one feeling that I have for this whole process is just I feel really lucky and fortunate and blessed that we have a family of healthy people because that wasn’t always guaranteed throughout this process.”
Andre and Jen Laubach are vaccinated against COVID and encourage other families to do the same.
Read: Metro Detroit parents welcome newborn twins while fighting coronavirus