Randy Rogers Opens Up About Daughter Rumer Rain's Death: "She Never Opened Her Eyes"

MStars News previously reported that Randy Rogers of the Randy Rogers Band lost his newborn daughter, Rumer Rain, earlier this month, just six days after she was born. Now the singer, father and husband is finally opening up about his baby girl's death.

According to People, Randy and his wife Chelsea were excited when they welcomed their daughter into the world with dark hair. Rumer's sisters had light hair, making Rumer unique, because her mother wanted a baby with dark hair.

"My other two babies [daughters Isabel, 5, and River, 21 months] have my light hair," Rogers stated. "Chelsea really wanted a baby with dark hair like her. The minute Rumer was born I was like, 'Hell, yes!' She had a full head of dark hair! The moment was just full of joy. We thought we had a healthy baby. We shared the news with friends and even posted a picture on social media."

But their joy soon turned to concern when they noticed that things didn't seem right with their baby girl.

"She wouldn't eat and she wouldn't wake up," the father remembers. "She was very lethargic, she never opened her eyes. We kept getting assurances from the doctors and nurses — a lot of babies think they're still in mommy's belly and they don't want to wake up for a day or eat — but then Rumer went to the NICU about eight hours after her birth."

He continued, "They started running test after test and nothing was wrong with her. It was a six-day process. It was heart-wrenching and grueling not knowing what was wrong. She was put on a feeding tube pretty early on because she couldn't eat or swallow, then she decided to stop breathing and we had to put her on a vent."

Finally the doctors came up with a diagnosis and told the new parents that Rumer had "nonketotic hyperglycinemia (NKH), a rare genetic disorder that affects about 1 in 66,000 newborns in the U.S. each year and has no cure. It impairs the brain and leads to seizures, breathing and feeding difficulties, muscle limpness and lethargy."

On his daughter's condition, Rogers said, "Chelsea and I always thought that we were two peas in a pod," he admitted. "Turns out literally we are, genetically; we have the same exact recessed gene. The odds are astronomical."

Despite losing his daughter, Rogers and his wife also took their sadness as a lesson. The couple learned that they'd have to do in vitro fertilization in the future if they plan on having another child.

"Now because my daughter died and we now know we carry this gene, no one else in our family will have to have that happen to them and science is to thank for that."

"We'll just have to do in vitro fertilization," he explained. "There will need to be genetic screening and genetic testing done before the implantation of the fertilized egg. It's given us a lot of joy and hope knowing that it is possible for us to do this; it's just going to have to be a different route than the traditional one."