Now 36, and looking back on her life, the stepmother of three girls can say that she never wanted anything more than a child of her own.
Not just any child, but the son she had named Logan.
"My husband Kevin, to this day, cannot look at the pictures," she said, referring to the photos taken less than a year ago of her stillborn son at the hospital.
The date was Nov. 12, 2007. The baby's face is nestled in soft blankets, as if he were asleep.
"I got to see him afterwards. I held him and he was blessed," she said.
Treffert's painful choice to give up her baby when she was five months pregnant — for medical reasons — still haunts her.
"The decision I made came down to quality of life," she said. "I had other children to think about."
Her youngest stepdaughter, MacKenzie, then 9 years old, was making all kinds of plans for a new baby brother. Kevin had been dreaming of calling out his son's name from the bleachers of a sports field, any sports field.
"Way to go Logan! Nice one!"
Treffert couldn't see drawing out the inevitable.
Doctors at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee tried to explain the unborn baby's condition. They used the words "always fatal" when describing Trisomy 13, or Patau's syndrome. It occurs when a fetus has three chromosomes in the 13th position instead of the normal two, causing severe birth defects. The majority of babies with this condition are born dead and those few who survive birth live for a day or two, at most.
As the news sunk in, Treffert replayed in her mind how excited her family had been when she told them she was expecting for the first time. She was just as surprised, having written off her "feeling queasy" as an after effect of the emergency appendectomy she'd gone through a few weeks before.
It was her hairdresser that had finally remarked, "Are you sure you're not pregnant?"
Hard decisions
"When the doctors gave us the bad news, I knew either way, even if I'd gone full term, that I wasn't going to have a baby. Emotionally I couldn't go through that for another five months," she said of her decision.
Because she was 23 weeks along in pregnancy, Wisconsin state law required Treffert go through a labor and delivery.
It took over 12 hours for her to deliver her tiny, stillborn son at Children's Hospital.
The state also required a funeral home be involved in the baby's death.
"The Friday before I was scheduled to give birth I was sitting at the funeral home, writing an obituary for my son," she said.
Her grief was so great, she waited four months to bring her baby's ashes home from the funeral parlor. She waited until her due date came around in March.
The situation was made worse when Treffert had to battle with her healthcare provider, who insisted she had had an abortion.
"Even though the bill said labor and delivery, they didn't want to pay for anything," she said.
Treffert said her family has kept her "together" during these difficult months and she and Kevin are just getting to the point where they can talk about what happened.
"The hard part is some people say I can't know what it's like to be a parent because I don't have my own child, and that comment stings. I have three stepdaughters that I love," she said.
The well-meaning also say things like, "Oh, you can try again," but Treffert said she keeps seeing Logan in her mind's eye.
"I see little kids and I have this picture in my mind of what he would look like," she said.
The lost baby is remembered now in many ways. Treffert has a tattoo of a star and a halo on the inside of her wrist, and a memory pond is set up in the back yard. Each of her stepdaughters has been given an angel ornament that carries the story of "Christmas in Heaven."
Treffert believes that someday she will know the reason she had to let go of Logan.
"I can sit back and wonder all kinds of 'what ifs,' but I've never lived my life like that before. At this point, I can't tell you if I will ever have another child, but I can tell you Logan will always be my shining star."
