Merle Haggard’s Son, Ben, and His Girlfriend Welcome Baby Boy After Massive Complications
Singer-songwriter Ben Haggard and his girlfriend, Jeyda Beyzade, are the parents of a newborn baby boy, but the delivery was touch and go after Beyzade experienced complications.
The couple welcomed their son, Liam James, on June 29, and Haggard — whose own father was the legendary Merle Haggard — turned to Instagram to share a precious black-and-white shot of himself cradling the baby and looking at him with great love.
“Our lives changed for the better yesterday,” he captions the picture.
In an emotional post to Facebook, Beyzade revealed that the delivery was fraught with serious complications, calling the experience "one of the hardest but yet most rewarding in my life."
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She spent 35 hours in natural labor before receiving an epidural and getting induced, after which things went from bad to worse when she appeared to suffer a side effect from one of the drugs she'd been given. Beyzade had to be rushed into surgery for an emergency C-section, where she experienced even more complications. She says she could feel the room start to fade away, and in that moment, she believed she was dying.
"I remember thinking, 'Ben's going to be on his own with this baby I’ll never get to hold or see,'" she writes, adding that the sound of the baby crying made her keep fighting. She calls it the "best noise I’ve ever heard in my life," and says hearing Haggard speaking to her through her fog also kept her going.
"I really believe that the love I heard from him and the love I have for my baby boy pulled me through," she states.
The baby is home now and doing well, and Beyzade is requesting some private time with her family after her ordeal. "I hope every one understands," she writes. "This has been the largest event in our lives, good and bad... the angels were with us and I am so glad I can be here to love Ben and baby Liam — forever."
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