bdmetronews Desk ॥ He was the baby Prince and his then-wife Mayte Garcia had long hoped for. They named him Amiir, Arabic for Prince, while he was in Mayte’s womb, and listened to his heartbeat in anticipation of his birth. But the baby, born Oct. 16, 1996, had Pfeiffer syndrome type 2, a rare genetic disorder, and lived just six days.
In her new memoir, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince, excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLE, Garcia tells the story of their passionate love, their excitement about the baby, and the pain and heartbreak of Amiir’s short life which forever haunted them both.
“I don’t think he ever got over it,” Garcia, now 43, tells PEOPLE of her ex-husband, who died last April from an accidental overdose. “I don’t know how anybody can get over it. I know I haven’t.”
When Garcia, then 22, discovered she was pregnant, she and Prince were overjoyed at the thought of raising a family at their home in Paisley Park. The pregnancy went smoothly until she began bleeding one day and a doctor recommended an amniocentesis to test for genetic abnormalities. The procedure, the doctor warned, carried a risk of miscarriage.
Yet as the doctor told them: “Sometimes the body is trying to release the fetus for a reason.” But Prince, Garcia writes, was against it: “My husband said, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’”
Once home, the couple prayed for his health.
“Please, bless this child,” said Prince as he prayed on his knees. “We know you won’t allow this child to be harmed.”
But further exams revealed more complications.
