Morgan Goodwin: Wife of 49ers Player Marquise Goodwin Opens Up About Stillborn Son
On Sunday, San Francisco 49ers player Marquise Goodwin helped lead his team to victory against the New York Giants by catching an 83-yard touchdown pass. Hours earlier, he and his wife Morgan sat emotionally in a hospital and kissed their newborn son goodbye.
“We cried. It was a hard thing to take in,” Morgan Goodwin, 24, tells PEOPLE of those moments with Marquise. “This hurts because I was 19 weeks, I was almost halfway there.”
The baby, who the couple had decided to name Marquise Jr., was delivered stillborn at 3:52 a.m. Both Marquise, 26, and Morgan announced the death on their respective social media accounts, including photos of the baby’s hand.
Morgan says she had some complications in the week leading up to the delivery. She says she was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance hours before the birth, and Marquise was by her side each step of the way.
“I felt joy in holding my baby even though it was a sad moment,” Morgan says. “I was so amazed. His eyes were still shut at this point, but the hands, the feet. He looked exactly like his daddy.”
Morgan and Marquise, college sweethearts, wed in February 2016 and had dreamed of starting a family. Morgan says the couple planned to have the baby and even used fertility treatments after she suffered a miscarriage in 2013.
“I was looking forward to having someone to call our own — our own creation,” she tells PEOPLE. “I feel I was placed in this world to be a mother, and I want to be a mother. I want to be a mother to four kids, five. I want a lot of children so this hurts.”
The pair spent as long as they could with their son before letting him go, and Morgan says Marquise was too heartbroken to play the headline-making game.
“I said, ‘Baby, just go out there and do your thing. I’ll be okay,’ ” Morgan recalls.
And so he went. After producing the team’s biggest play of the year, Marquise emotionally sank to his knees in the end zone.
“It was very, very emotional watching him out there,” Morgan tells PEOPLE. “Seeing him score the touchdown and watching him get emotional after the game. I was crying. It was an amazing moment, but it was also a very sad moment.”
Immediately after the game, Morgan says, Marquise rushed to the hospital to be with his wife. Now, the Goodwins have been coping as best they can in the wake of the death. But Morgan says they haven’t given up on their dream of having children.
“We will try again,” she says.
This story originally appeared on people.com.
