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'We're trying to put the past behind us,' he said of his relationship with Amber's family. Kleinmeyer, who declined to be interviewed at length, said he is doing what is best for Leland and Lexi, who is healthy and doing well. 'Amber would want her children to be in her family's life.' 'When you love somebody and lose somebody, you do what they would want you to do,' she said. Still, Mary Phillips said she is trying to resolve the differences for the sake of the children.
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The loss of Amber has created tension between the two families, and the Phillips family said they have not been able to see the children on a regular basis. She gave birth to their first baby, Leland, in March 2011.Īfter Amber's death, Kleinmeyer took home their second child, Lexi, and today is raising both children with the help of his family. 'People say these kind of things when people pass, but her smile really was beautiful,' Mary Phillips said.Īmber and Tommy Kleinmeyer had dated on and off when she became pregnant in 2010. Amber never turned down the opportunity to jump in the back of other people's photos and frequently uploaded self-portraits to Facebook, said her sisters Summer and Sarah. Even as a baby, she rarely cried, her mom said.Īs she grew, friends began to call her Ham.
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It wasn't in Amber's nature to be upset or unhappy, her family said. 'She wasn't a complainer,' said Amber's sister Elizabeth Phillips. She hesitated to ask for help ? although she was in pain, she didn't want to make a big deal of it, her mother said. But later that night, she once again complained of severe pain and was taken back to the hospital. Right before she died, she spent 10 days in the hospital before her release on the 26th. Her seven months of pregnancy had difficulties, and Amber was admitted several times to the hospital.
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Not until later would her family learn Amber had suffered from placenta accreta, a more severe complication that often can be fatal. You're going to be fine,' ' said Phillips, who lives in Golden Gate Estates.Īfter several bleeding spells, doctors had diagnosed Amber with placenta previa, a survivable condition that happens when the placenta covers the mother's cervix, sometimes leading to hemorrhage and preterm birth. 'I said, ?Baby, women don't die in childbirth anymore. Mary Phillips had, in fact, used that information to reassure her daughter as she lay panicked in a hospital bed hours before her death. About 650 such deaths are recorded each year by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's rare now for an American woman to die in childbirth. It has been a year since Amber Phillips died, but to her family, it feels like no time at all. It was April 27, 2012, barely two months after the former Naples High School student's 20th birthday. In the cold parlance of a hospital, staff told her 'the situation is grave.' At 8:09 a.m., they called the time of death. Phillips clasped the doctor's hands and begged him to save Amber. Now, after hearing calls of a 'code blue' and no sign of her daughter, she looked desperately for someone in the women's center to quash her suspicions. Hospital staff already had come out with her granddaughter, a perfect but premature baby, she remembers. Nearly five hours after Mary Phillips' daughter was wheeled into a Collier County operating room, the door swung open and a doctor emerged.