New Mother Heartbroken After Fiance, Mother Die in Car Wreck En Route to Hospital
"Don't take life for granted." Crystal Matrau-Belt says.
— -- A Michigan woman whose fiance and mother were killed as they sped to the hospital to meet her before she gave birth said she wants others to "chereish every moment."
Crystal Matrau-Belt, 24, gave birth to her son, Jeremiah James Matrau-Skokan, last Saturday at the Bronson Medical Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her fiance, Emil Skokan III, and her mother, Peggy Nichols, were driving to meet her when Skokan lost control of the car. Both Skokan and Nicols were killed in the crash, Matrau-Belt told ABC News.
Matrau-Belt said she had called her fiance before she had an emergency cesarean section to tell him they were going to deliver the baby.
"He said, 'Do you need anything?' and that he would come up shortly and that he loved me and all that and stuff," Matrau-Belt recalled of her conversation with Skokan when she was at the hospital. "It was the last time I talked to him."
While she wanted to wait for her fiance, Matrau-Belt said her extended family, including her stepfather and stepmother were there to help her during the delivery.
"[My family] had already known before my c-section," about the car crash, Matrau-Belt said. "My stepmom was in the [delivery] room with me and … she was completely there for me. You couldn’t even tell anything was wrong."
Hours after delivering her son, Matrau-Belt's family broke the news that her fiance and mother had been killed in a car accident.
"To lose my fiancé and my mom … and welcoming my son in my life, it's hard to balance that all," she told ABC News.
Matrau-Belt named her son Jeremiah, a name she and Skakon had agreed on just before her delivery.
"Our entire pregnancy we could not agree on a name. Everybody kept asking what’s the name and we said we don’t know yet," said Matrau-Belt. "I said 'What about Jeremiah?' He loves the name. ... The first time we agreed on a name was Friday."
Matrau-Belt said she sees a lot of her fiance's personality in her young son already.
"The looks he gives if something is annoying him, he gives this wrinkled up nose look," Matrau-Belt said of her son making a face similar to her fiance. "They have the same kind of expressions. When I look at him I see a lot of Emile in him."
Matrau-Belt is expected to get out of the hospital tonight so that she can attend the funerals for her fiance and mother later this week.
"Don’t take life for granted," Matrau-Belt told ABC News. "You’ve got to cherish every moment. You don’t know when things are going to happen, especially if you’re on the way to the birth of your child and grandchild. You’ve got to be able to slow down and look at every part of life and cherish it."