Matt Okula is reflecting on the past four months since he lost his wife, Hailey, on the same day they welcomed their first baby together.
In an Instagram video posted on Thursday, July 24, the grieving widower shared an update on what he called the “hardest, most emotional, confusing time” of his life. On March 29, his wife — known on Instagram as “Nurse Hailey” — died suddenly due to childbirth complications.
Minutes after their son, Crew, was born via cesarean section, Hailey went into cardiac arrest following an amniotic fluid embolism (AFE). She was 33.
“Everything that I knew about my life changed. I lost my wife, Hailey Okula, the love of my life, my best friend, the person I built a life with for the last 12 years and essentially my entire adult life,” said Matt in his recent video, which was also shared to Hailey’s nursing community Instagram account @RNNewGrads.
“At the same time, our son Crew was born,” he added. “I became a father and a widower at the same moment.”
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Hailey and Matt Okula.
The LAFD firefighter opened up about learning to live in his new reality, a process which he admitted hasn’t been linear at all. Matt said he’s still figuring out “how to grieve” and “heal” after Hailey’s death.
“Some days are completely debilitating,” he explained. “Some days I feel like I’m just surviving hour by hour, and some days I feel those little small pieces of peace.”
Matt continued to speak to Hailey’s commitment to uplifting and helping other nurses on the @RNNewGrads page, where she regularly posted about careers in medicine. The late content creator also candidly documented her fertility journey — and eventually, her pregnancy with Crew through IVF — for her social media followers, who numbered at over 425,000 at the time of her death.
Despite his ultimate support, Matt wasn’t always all in on the idea of sharing about that aspect of their personal lives, as he recalled in his latest video.
“I still laugh when I think about it. We had a long talk about whether to share that we were gonna be doing IVF,” he began. “She wanted her community to trust her and feel that she was very transparent about everything in her life.”
He gave Hailey his “counter argument” and concluded that they should hold off, but he soon realized the extent of his wife’s commitment to her fellow nurses.
“The very next day I went to work at the fire station, and I look at my phone, and she posted it. She posted a story that we were going through IVF and she was sharing the struggles and the journey the whole way through,” said Matt.
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Matt and Hailey Okula.
He became emotional as he continued to remember some of her best qualities: “That was Hailey. She was brave, open, real, always leading with her heart,” he shared through tears. “She knew it would help other people that were having these same struggles. And we saw how impactful that was, a lot bigger probably than we thought it could have been.”
In honor of Hailey’s dedication, Matt said he’s decided to continue her legacy and impact as a nursing influencer and continue sharing on @RNNewGrads. In addition to keeping their followers up to date on his own life, Matt intends to upload content his wife created during her pregnancy that she was never able to post.
“I’m going to do my best to share the journey honestly. You won’t just see highlights, and you won’t just see the grief. You’ll see both, because both are real,” he explained. “I know that this is not gonna be easy, but as hard as it’s gonna be, I’m gonna do my best to lead with transparency the same was that Hailey always did.”
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