Anna and Mike LaBenz Survive the Grizzly Bear Moments of their Marriage
Anna and Mike LaBenz recently celebrated their 20 year wedding anniversary. I know this because Anna posted on social media a beautiful photo of the two of them on their wedding day and she wrote: ‘Our story is one of adventure, heartache and passion.’
You know those people who we see and we think, ‘I’m afraid to ask what’s new because they always have something wild going on.’ That’s Anna and Mike.
MORALES: With everything y’all have been through I imagine you stop asking what’s next? (Laughter) MIKE: We would love a year of boredom. ANNA: Mike has said that over and over again.
Mike and Anna LaBenz’s life is anything but boring.
This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.
When they got married they both knew they wanted kids.
ANNA: We thought about getting pregnant and we got pregnant. There’s 8 years between us. Mike was like whenever you want to start but I don’t want to be the old dad.
They had a boy and named him Jack.
MIKE: The whole experience with Jack was uneventful. As a baby he was a joy to be around looking back of course we wanted to have more kids because it was very easy.
Two years later they got pregnant again. They started calling the baby JLB for Jack’s Little Brother. But this pregnancy didn’t go so smoothly.
MORALES: At what point did you know something’s not right?
ANNA: About six weeks before I had this overwhelming feeling something was wrong. He started having hiccups really a lot of hiccups.
Then the pregnancy became painful.
ANNA: I had such bad back pain I couldn't even walk the last couple weeks of the pregnancy.
But on the ultrasound JLB looked fine all the way up to two days before his due date. Mike, who is a radiologist came home from a long shift at the hospital and woke up Anna.
ANNA: Hey, we get to meet our baby boy tomorrow. I just looked at him and said I dont think the baby’s moving that’s crazy you just woke up he’s like just sit here on the edge of the bed he put his hands on my stomach. I don’t know we sat there for how long? MIKE: I don’t know but I was convinced I could feel him move.
Anna’s sister had flown in to take care of Jack. And Anna was already dilated so she scheduled an induction. When the couple went to the hospital as planned, a nurse hooked her up to a monitor.
ANNA: And we had like a new nurse she couldn’t find the heartbeat MIKE: And it should not be hard to find ANNA: So she goes to get the charge nurse and then for a brief moment she’s like there it is and you could hear it was a really faint heartbeat and she said Anna I think we’re going to have to go in for a C Section…and it was my heartbeat MIKE: The ultrasound tech is looking I’m watching over his shoulder and I could see it was obvious the heart was not beating.
ANNA:Then you go through all these things that you’re kind of scared, which is so stupid that you’re scared to see your baby.
Anna hadn’t had any pain medication with Jack and had planned the same for this birth.
ANNA: My OBGYN came in because I was crying so hard she said right now your heart is hurting so bad your body doesn’t need to be hurting.
So Anna had an epidural to take away at least the physical pain. She labored and JLB was finally born and the room was silent.
MIKE: Up until then I was still waiting for him to cry and I was like ok, now cry but it was completely silent and peaceful nobody’s trying to use the suction bulb on the nose and mouth MORALES: You were waiting for him to cry because you were still hopeful. MIKE: Mmhmm
ANNA: He was born and it was the most peaceful moment I’ve ever had in my whole life normally a baby’s born and theres chaos it was just quiet…There was such a huge presence of god not everyone believes in god but there was such a huge presence of God in the room it just felt like a space between here and there it was something I’ll always remember.
Afterwards Anna and Mike say many well-meaning family and friends offered unsolicited advice. Anna’s mom said Jack shouldn’t meet his baby brother. Mike’s parents insisted JLB be baptized.
ANNA: You feel really like you have no power A you're in this horrible situation and now all these decisions you could make surrounding your child are now no longer yours to make because people have more energy or a louder voice dominate that's really hard.
Anna says her mom lost a baby with a heart defect a week after he was born. Her mom came home from the hospital and the nursery had been dismantled like there was never a baby to begin with.
MIKE: I’d run into somebody who knew we were expecting but hadn't heard, hey hows that baby it felt like a kick in the gut. ANNA: as a mother your body doesn't know the morning of his funeral my milk came it it was horrible so you have all these phys reminders that worse angry at your body.
Anna and Mike discovered they grieved differently and needed different things.
ANNA: And that can cause a wedge you already feel so alone or isol the one person who has that shared experience with you you fall into that dark abyss. MIKE: We didn’t have the vocabulary to know how to even talk about it then.
And the only support group was for parents who’d lost children of all ages -- from a miscarriage to someone who lost a 40 year old. So Anna decided to do something about that. She started a grief group and whenever someone had a stillbirth at the hospital Anna would get a call. She’d jump in her car to sit bedside with the family. They called it the JLB Project.
ANNA: One thing JLB project has always been to empower family with what their choices are because you feel so disempowered make sure you know to take your time there's no rushing you can spend as long as you want.
The JLB Project has helped hundreds of families in Flagstaff grieve. She and Mike built the Children’s Memorial Garden of Flagstaff where families can put up a plaque for a child they have lost. And they can have some place to go that isn’t a cemetery to remember the son or daughter they lost.
Here’s Anna giving a speech at a plaque dedication a couple years ago.
AUDIO FROM CHILDREN’S GARDEN CELEBRATION
On July 20th Anna posted on Facebook a sweet black and white photo of JLB with his eyes closed. And she wrote, “you are one of my life’s greatest gifts.”
ANNA: He changed the trajectory of our lives everything comes to the surface all the things in our marriage we were struggling with came to the surface all the things I had to get help and learn how to talk about he gives me courage daily to try things I’d never tried before …
Anna and Mike made it through and they still wanted another child but they were scared. They wanted to know how JLB died so they could prevent it from happening again. He died of an umbilical cord accident, which is what it’s called when there’s a knot or a wrap in the cord. Anna found the leading researcher in the field Jason Collins who has since retired from the Tulane Pregnancy Institute and called him up.
ANNA: He was like, ‘did your baby have the hiccups?’ I was like, ‘yes.’
JASON COLLINS: If you have a baby that’s hiccuping say 10 minutes long and this is happening more than 4-5 times a day there’s a problem. The problem is you’re getting cord compression which is triggering a reflex, a hiccup reflex.
It’s not if the baby has a single hiccup or few. It’s if the baby is having 3 or more episodes in a 24 hour period that's lasting 10 minutes or longer. Then he says you need to go to the hospital and have what’s called a non stress test for at least 24 hours.
ANNA: I was like I didn’t know how would you know? MORALES: I mean I was obsessive reading books. I don’t recall anything... ANNA: They’re afraid people will get afraid and show up all the time with hiccups.
JASON COLLINS: It’s a taboo topic. They’re afraid of litigation if they miss one. And the other part is they don't understand it because it’s not taught at all.
So fueled with this knowledge Anna and Mike get pregnant again. At 20 weeks they go in for an ultrasound and the tech along with Mike could see once again something is not right.
MIKE: It was obvious something was amiss. She tried to turn the screen away from you and you were like no there was something wrong the kind of wrong that may not be compatible with life.
They couldn’t find a functioning kidney so Anna’s doctor sent her down to Phoenix to see a perinatologist. The sonographer looked and looked and could not find one.
ANNA: I’m becoming more and more hysterical and crying and finally the ultrasound tech was like get up off the table walk around get your breath. So Mike and I went out to this garden area and prayed. We got on our knees and prayed and we went back in she had me get on the table rt there was a tiny little kidney. That was really incredible. Again felt the presence of something greater than myself.
Just to be safe Anna and Mike flew to New Orleans to meet with Jason Collins the umbilical cord specialist. He saw a healthy baby and no entanglement but sent them home with a monitor and instructions to check every night.
The results were sent to Collins as well as Anna’s doctor Laurie Perrin. Weeks went by. They picked out a name — Olivia — and prepared her room.
Everything was fine until one night Olivia got the hiccups and they didn’t go away. They lasted for seven minutes, which Collins said should indicate a cord compression so Anna and Mike went to the hospital. The baby’s heart rate was fine but taking no chances Laurie kept them there five more days. The baby’s biophysical profile wasn’t looking great so at 32 weeks they decided to induce.
ANNA: The alarms go off and Olivia had a cord compression. They did an emergency C and Olivia’s cord was wrapped around her ankle just like JLB’s. It was crazy.
MORALES: So had you not gone to New Orleans, done all the monitoring, you would’ve had the same outcome. MIKE: Very well could have been. MORALES: I imagine you’ve affected the way Dr. Perrin does her work. ANNA: She says I have. And those babies lives were potentially saved she was open to taking info that wasn't given to her in med school and was controversial for whatever reason and listening to it and being open to it.
So today Mike and Anna appreciate Jack and Olivia who are now 17 and 12 probably a little more than most parents.
Here they are playing Life.
SFX OF THE LABENZES PLAYING LIFE
ANNA: We celebrate our rainbow babies. That’s what we call a baby born after a loss like a rainbow after a storm.
Anna has decided to take a step back from the JLB Project to focus on the living.
One of the things they do is go on adventures as a family — climbing, scuba diving, skiing. In June they went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On their last morning they decided to get up early and go for a hike in the Tetons.
MIKE: We said there could be bears out this early we need to be talking more aware of our surroundings there are a lot of bears there MORALES: What kinds of noises were you making?
ANNA: We were just talking I was clapping every once in a while…
MIKE: We’re walking along Jack in front, followed by Anna, Olivia and I’m in the back. Jack goes Bear and stops. I’m the furthest back and lean out. I can see the butt of a bear coming out of the grassy wetland area up onto the trail and turn towards us.
MORALES: HOW FAR AWAY? It was probably 40 feet at this point. MORALES: PRETTY CLOSE. It was uncomfortably close. I’m stationary I get olivia and jack and anna behind me ANNA: I’m the furthest away LAUGHING we are trying to as calmly as we can back away slowly waving our arms as all the books have said.
Mike’s thinking what an amazing experience.
MIKE: I’ve taken out my phone to take a picture. I’m fumbling with my phone ANNA: So stupid you’d never know we grew up in these mountains. MIKE: I have phone in one hand take a picture while we back up slowly waving arms ANNA: You have to say what we were saying.
MIKE: ’People! people here! Not food! People! You dont want to eat people! (Laughing) The bear is moving towards us a slow bear walk.
So they start backing up a little faster.
MIKE: Then the bear breaks into a bear jog. MORALES: TOWARDS YOU Towards us at this time. I’m thinking this is a good time to put away the phone …so the bear abruptly turns and jumps onto the trunk of a tree.
At this point the bear climbs his front paws up the tree into a standing position. This is when Mike realizes how big the animal is. It’s at least two feet taller than his 6 foot 4 son Jack. He also saw all the markings of a grizzly bear — sloped snout, hump between the shoulder blades, massive claws.
MORALES: Because it was a grizzly. Did you know it was a more dangerous situation? MIKE: Oh yeah, we had been told black bears are almost always harmless but grizzlies are very unpredictable and aggressive.
But Mike thought the bear’s more interested in the tree at this point so he starts hopping sideways keeping one eye on the bear and the other on the trail when he looks up at the bear…
MIKE: It jumps back down on the trail and comes at a full charge. I yell over my shoulder run ANNA: He goes run! I’m like, ‘ok I’m out of here! MIKE: I could see out of the corner of my eye Jack was still fairly close he took off running. I’m still waving my arms wildly.
…Until the bear is just 15 feet away.
Mike pulled his large green backpack up over his head. Dropped to the ground in the fetal position putting the pack between him and the bear.
MIKE: And I could see looking back under my arm. The moment I had done that the bear turns 90 degrees to his right our left and heads up the hill never to be seen again by us. MORALES: Woah. How did you keep from screaming and running and doing the things you’re not supposed to do?ANNA: We had Olivia who had been seeing the signs about bears the whole time we were in Jackson we were researching what to do if we encounter a bear. So she was like ‘mom, don’t you scream!’ I was like I really want to. When Mike said run, Olivia was crying, ‘everything said not to run!’ MIKE: Anna and Olivia were clearly no longer visible to the bear. ANNA: Jack had some loyalty to Mike. He was going to save him with his pocket knife. (LAUGHTER FADES OUT)
MORALES: So the name of this podcast is 2 Lives. It’s based on a quote by Confucius who said, ‘we’re all given two lives. The second one starts the moment we realize we have only one. And I just wondered if that brought up anything for either of you.
MIKE: My life had been easily defined by the next achievement or the next goal the next goal. I dont have anymore goals I no longer have these goals that corresponded in time with when we lost JLB. The combination made me have to look at my life I had always been striving the future is no longer a given no longer this predictable thing that I had some control over the whole thing was a revelation definitely made me much more present in how I live. ANNA: All of these life goals like Mike said you work really hard to hold onto that. When you have a tragedy you don't have control over that. But ultimately it’s not in your hands. What is in your hands you’re dealt so if you're dealt a really diff situation you can choose to hold onto bitterness and anger or you can choose to hang onto what’s changed you I call those my gifts and then you can move forward with a grateful heart.
And that’s clearly what Anna and Mike have done.
This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.
This episode was produced and hosted by me. Annie Galloway creates original illustrations for each show. You can see them at 2 lives dot org or our social sites. Find us at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at 2 Lives Podcast. And if you like the show please leave a review or rating at Apple Podcasts. Some people have asked how they can support 2 Lives. Go to 2 Lives dot org to find a link to see all the ways you can support us. And thank you! A version of this episode first aired on KJZZ’s 2 Lives in November of 2020.
