CORPUS CHRISTI—The grandparents of premature twin infants who died this week after receiving an overdose of a blood thinner said Keith and Kaylynn Garcia will be buried Saturday, the day the family had planned a baby shower.

Hector and Maggie Chapa, parents of Erika Garcia, the infants’ mother, said the entire family is struggling with the mystery of what led to the babies’ deaths this week.

“We want answers. We want to know what happened,” Maggie Chapa told a news conference at their attorney’s office.

Christus Spohn Hospital South has acknowledged that an error in its pharmacy caused the overdose of 14 infants in the hospital. 

Autopsies are being conducted but the results have not been released. Another three may have been given an overdose, but follow-up checks on them show no ill effects, the hospital said.

Heparin is an anti-clotting drug. In 2006, six babies received an overdose of Heparin at an Indianapolis hospital. Three of them died. And actor Dennis Quaid brought the dangers of Heparin overdoses into the public eye when he sued the hospital that overdosed his twins, who survived.

Nurses at Christus Spohn Hospital South discovered Sunday night that several infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit received heparin overdoses of as much as 100 times the normal amount.

“Christus Spohn (Health System) confirms that an error occurred during the mixing process in our hospital pharmacy,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Davis said in a prepared statement Thursday.  “The error was unrelated to product labeling or packaging.”

The other cases involved mistakes made because of nearly identical packaging of different kinds of Heparin.

The hospital announced earlier this week that two pharmacy employees had taken voluntary leave while the investigation proceeded. It was not immediately clear what, if anything, Thursday’s confirmation meant for those employees.

The Garcia infants were transported to the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit within a day of their birth at Christus Spohn Hospital Alice. They were born about one month premature, each weighing between four and five pounds.

“I didn’t get to hold them,” Maggie Chapa said, choking back tears. “They said everything was fine, they were just short of breath.” Doctors also told the family the infants had sleep apnea, but that it was not serious, Chapa said.

Chapa asked the pediatrician if their lungs were fully developed, and he answered “yes,” she said.

Then, last Thursday, the family was called back to the Corpus Christi hospital and informed that there were complications.

Maggie Chapa said doctors told their daughter they suspected some sort of infection, but could not identify it. They put the infants on six different antibiotics, she said. The heparin overdoses were given last Friday.

When Keith Garcia died Tuesday, doctors mentioned the possibility of meningitis, Maggie Chapa said, but they had not confirmed it.

Since Kaylynn’s death Wednesday, 16-year-old Erika and her husband Eric, 18, have been trying to get their minds around the idea that the twins whose arrival they had prepared for with cribs and clothes, had died.

Erika is still recovering from her Caesarean section birth. Both babies were breech.

Eric Garcia may be taking it even harder than his wife, Hector Chapa, 42, said. Eric was able to spend more time with Keith and Kaylynn in the hospital. The Chapas were thankful that the infants were baptized and administrators allowed their extended family to be present.

The family spent much of Thursday making arrangements for the infants’ burials and Friday was on a mission to find the perfect dress in which to bury Kaylynn, Maggie Chapa said.

Services and burial are planned for Saturday in Corpus Christi.

Maggie Chapa, a technician at a dialysis clinic in Alice, said she was shocked to hear of the heparin overdose. She said the clinic uses heparin to flush intravenous lines.

The babies’ parents requested and received a judge’s order late Wednesday preventing the hospital from destroying any records related to the babies’ hospital stay or the heparin overdose.

Hospital officials said Thursday that autopsies are being conducted on both of the Garcia infants and the Texas Department of State Health Services is reviewing the incident.