Maddie and Josh Warren help other families navigate infant loss in honor of their son, Riley
By Dr. Robin Rogers

Maddie and Josh Warren had imagined what their son’s arrival would look like a thousand times. After trying for a couple of years to conceive, they learned in the summer of 2022 that they were expecting. By October, they knew they were having a boy. His name would be Riley James. Their pregnancy was typical until Maddie’s blood pressure rose toward the end of her pregnancy; her medical team decided to induce labor at 37 ½ weeks.

Maddie and Josh were married at Garrison Gardens in October 2019. submitted photo

On April 6th, 2023, the couple checked into CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System. Everything was normal until the next day, which was Good Friday. Monitors had shown Riley’s heart rate to be steady. Maddie was about six centimeters dilated when, in a matter of moments, everything changed.

“The nurses rushed in, and the doctor rushed in,” Maddie recalled. “They kept telling me, ‘We think you’re having a placenta abruption. You’re bleeding. We’ve got to take you for emergency surgery right away.’”

The team rushed Maddie toward an emergency C-section. She needed general anesthesia, so Josh could not join her; he was left waiting and wondering.

Riley was born at 8 p.m. on April 7th, weighing 7 pounds, 13 ounces. Maddie was told that he was doing well. While she recovered from surgery, Josh and other family members watched delightedly through the nursery windows as nurses performed the newborn’s routine checks.

Suddenly, Riley’s heart stopped. Medical staff swiftly resuscitated him and rushed him to the neonatal intensive care unit. The placental abruption had caused significant blood loss for both mother and baby. Riley received blood transfusions and intensive treatment as doctors worked to save his life.

“She looked at me, and she said, ‘You need to hold him,’ and that is when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was not coming home with us.”

— Maddie Warren

Throughout the evening, still groggy from anesthesia, Maddie struggled to understand the seriousness of what was happening. Sometime in the middle of the night, nurses helped her into a wheelchair and pushed her through the hospital corridors so that she could meet her son for the first time in the NICU.

Riley, the baby who had seemed perfectly healthy hours earlier, was connected to tubes, monitors, and equipment. He was desperately sick, but to Maddie, he also looked perfect.

When the neonatologist asked whether she wanted to hold him, Maddie hesitated, afraid she might interfere with the medical team’s efforts to save him. Wires and tubes were everywhere. Then, one of her care team said something she would never forget.

“She looked at me, and she said, ‘You need to hold him,’” Maddie recalled, “and that is when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was not coming home with us.”

After nearly 12 hours of transfusions and treatment, doctors explained that they were not confident another round of interventions could change Riley’s outcome. Maddie and Josh faced a decision no parent should ever have to make: continue treatment or allow their son to die peacefully.

“We looked at each other, and it didn’t take long for us to decide,” Maddie said. “We had to let him go because I just knew in my soul that he wasn’t going to be okay.”

On the morning of April 8th, Riley died.

Maddie and Josh, suffering from shock, were unable to remain with their son through his final moments, but their parents and Josh’s brother remained with him as he passed, rocking him, singing to him, and changing his clothes. Later, encouraged by a friend, Maddie held her son.

“He was so beautiful, so perfect,” she said. “I just thought it was hard to even look at him because I just wanted to take him home. He looked so good, so perfect.”

The Warrens had spent months imagining their future family. Maddie had even purchased an Easter outfit for him to wear home. Instead, on Easter Sunday, they left the hospital without their baby. They returned to their home, where a nursery was decorated and filled with a crib, toys, and baby boy clothes.

In the weeks and months that followed, the Warrens learned that grief does not follow a schedule. Friends and family showed up in the beginning, but the world eventually resumed its ordinary rhythm while their lives remained forever changed.

Maddie’s employers at the time, Thomas & Thomas, CPAs, were wonderful, Maddie said. They gave her all the time she needed to grieve the loss of Riley. She and Josh also found an online support group that connected them with other parents who understood their experience. There was comfort in discovering that other families, some close by and some on the other side of the world, were experiencing the same pain, asking the same questions, and struggling with the same absence that they were.

**Maddie posed with a painting from a class for her bimonthly Remember Me With Joy support circle. submitted photo**

Over time, through connection to others and a faith in God, Maddie and Josh moved toward healing.

Eventually, Maddie’s desire to honor Riley’s life led her to Catie Swenson, founder of Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, a Texarkana organization that supports families with babies in the NICU. For Riley’s first birthday, Maddie collected donations for Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and Grace House, a transitional home for women and children. The gesture planted a seed. She got involved with Remember Me With Joy, an extension ministry of Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. RMWJ supports parents who have endured miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss, including at monthly memorial services.

***Maddie and Josh delivered gifts collected by their friends and family for Remember Me With Joy in honor of Riley’s third birthday.***

Now director of the ministry, Maddie lives out one of the many lessons she has learned as a grieving parent: the perfect words don’t exist, but it is important to show up anyway. Her advice to loved ones is to be present with grieving parents; to sit with people in their sorrow, she said, means more than they realize.

Almost two years after their greatest heartbreak, Maddie and Josh discovered they were expecting a second child. Throughout her pregnancy, fear loomed over every appointment and dream, but in September 2025, Gracie arrived safely, opening a new chapter of their tale. Both children are integral parts of their family’s story: one whose life ended far too soon and another whose presence has brought profound joy.

Maddie and Josh announced their second pregnancy in August 2025. photo by brooke tucker photography

Gracie Warren was born in September 2025. photo by kali rushing photography

Maddie’s faith continues to sustain her, especially on the days when grief feels too heavy to carry alone. She has learned that moving forward does not mean leaving a child behind but carrying that child’s memory forward in the life that continues. Through Remember Me With Joy, Riley’s legacy reaches far beyond the few hours his family had with him. In every support group, memorial service, and act of compassion, Riley lives on.

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