An accomplished doctor who went to law school before becoming an executive medical officer  at Baltimore’s chapter of the American Red Cross died after giving birth to her first children, twin boys, at age 56. 

Even though Lisa Swinton McLaughlin‘s sons Jordan and Dylan were born premature on December 27, 2014 and close to 5 pounds each, they were fairly healthy with McLaughlin left the hospital a few days after, leaving the boys in the neonatal intensive care unit. 

She assumed the pain she was experiencing after discharge were due to her C-section but it was a bowel obstruction which took her life this January 4. 

It’s a sad story for the woman whose late father, Lee Vertis Swinton, was an attorney and a Missouri state senator, and mother Grace was an educator.

She only married at age 40 to her husband Mike McLaughlin, who was about 51 -years old when they tied he knot, and after ten years of fertility struggles and in vitro fertilization, they were finally successful.

Lisa Swinton McLaughlin holds sons Dylan and Jordan before she passed away days later.

“She wanted what every other woman had, and that’s children,” Mike McLaughlin told Omaha.com.

“She was just on cloud nine,” he said. “That’s the happiest I’ve probably seen her in my life.”

He said his wife was able to hold the boys before she left the hospital, and Mike, now age 67,  plans to get a nanny and relocate to Nebraska when the kids get out of the Nicu. 

What a sad story.

I have to add this is the kind of story that gives hope to women who put their career first and manage to find love and eventually conceive a baby. But then this unfortunate end just is an unexpected dagger. *sigh*