My husband, Ryan and I met on February 18 th , 2017, after his rookie year playing with the Indianapolis Colts. We met in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was living at the time, I had moved for my job with General Electric, and he had been in town for a wedding. We met the old-fashioned, romantic way: late night and a little (maybe a lot) drunk at a bar. The rest goes like this...
We dated long-distance for a year and a half before I lost my mind and agreed to leave Atlanta and
move to Indianapolis to be with him and support one of the craziest careers in the world – the life of an NFL player.
He proposed while the world was locked down during the COVID 19 pandemic, on the dock in our
backyard overlooking the lake we live on. He and our Yorkie, Jake, were wearing tuxedos with marquee lights behind spelling “MARRY ME”. It was super romantic and thoughtful, one of the best days of our life.
We were married exactly one year later, with all of our friends and family (don’t ask us how we got away with it; we still don’t know), in Cincinnati, Ohio – our hometown. Important note: Ryan and I grew up five minutes from each other and went to the same elementary school and high school. However, because we are three years apart (I’m a Cougar), we never knew of each other, although our families knew of one another. Cut back to May 1, 2021, we were married on the most beautiful day of the year, and was truly the happiest day of our entire lives.
That was until late August 2021, three months later, we discovered I was pregnant with our first child. We were not-not-trying but just couldn’t believe how quickly it happened for us. We were on cloud one million. And then, in early November, we, along with our families, stood in the middle of Lucas Oil Stadium, with HBO Hard Knocks filming, and watched as “BABY KELLY IS A GIRL” Illuminated everywhere there was a screen in the stadium. THAT truly topped it all and became the best day of our lives. Ryan has said since the early days of dating, he’s always wanted to be a girl dad. I am one of four; three out of the four of us Zoos are girls.
On December 15th , I went into the hospital alone, very conscious not to pull my husband out of
work/practice unless there was a true emergency since he had just missed the previous two weeks due to COVID (we were still on the 10-day quarantine rules back then).
Within minutes of lying in bed in the Labor and Delivery Triage (aka ER) room, the nurse went quiet after being quite chatty minutes before and said she had to get the doctor. Moments later, the on-call doctor came in and confirmed what I had already known; our daughter, whom we had just recently agreed to name Mary Katherine aka Mary Kate, after our grandmothers, was gone.
They said her heart just stopped beating, and we weren’t given any reasons as to why. I was then
instructed that I could “hop down off the table and walk next door to Labor and Delivery unit to deliver our daughter since I was too far along, or I could go home and “collect myself and come back to do so the next day.”
I don’t know if I truly understood what was going on yet but this would begin the most heartbreaking 1.5 years to come for my husband and I. It’s why this site now exists. I will get into the weeds of losing MK and everything we’ve felt and experienced since then. But that’s another post or 100 on its own. I want to wrap up our story that evolves daily here with this. We lost MK. We almost lost each other in our grief but chose our love and to do the work to survive this together and now I believe with all my heart there isn’t anything in this world that could come between Ryan and I (again, I will share these details too, but in it’s own post).
We had to allow some time so that I could physically and mentally heal but after a few months, Ryan and I decided it was time to try to conceive again. This would lead to an incredibly heartbreaking and, truthfully, just DARK, 10 months. For the longest time, I couldn’t accept that I needed help. On Thanksgiving of 2022, I was in such a broken place after holding yet another negative pregnancy test that I realized we had no other option but to accept help. We started IVF on December 24th , 2022 – Christmas Eve, exactly one week after the first anniversary of losing our MaryKate.
We went through one round. We were fortunate enough to do a fresh transfer; I was so adamant about that for reasons I’ll disclose at another time in another post. We implanted two embryos. Because we did a fresh transfer, there was no genetic or gender testing. We went in “blind” so to speak. On January 16th , six days after my implantation, I took an at-home pregnancy test, which your fertility doctor will advise you strongly NOT TO DO for so many good reasons. We did it anyway. And the faintest second line appeared. Ryan and I both just cried and held each other. Our doctor confirmed our pregnancy on the 20th.
We are currently expecting twin baby boys: Ford Patrick and Duke Thomas. WE ARE OVER THE MOON.
To officially wrap our story up, I want to finish with some of the work Ryan and I do now, our mission if you will, because we lost our daughter and have been introduced to the strongest, most beautiful community there is, albeit it’s a very unfortunate one to have to be a part of: the Loss Community. Let me just say/scream: You DO NOT have to go off and start a charity in your child’s name or do anything when you lose a baby/child. Choosing to put one foot in front of the other after loss is enough. You will tell yourself otherwise, especially in the very beginning, believe me. But give yourself GRACE. Maybe it will come later. But healing and continuing to live, even if we don’t feel like it, are the best gifts we can give our children; anything after is a bonus.
With that being said, we had so many incredible organizations surround us and lift us after our loss, there was no way we couldn’t get involved. We realized we did not have to reinvent the wheel or develop a foundation of our own when so many out there are already doing it SO well. Some of these organizations just need awareness and more resources which we knew we could do, especially using our platforms.
I now sit on the board for Healthy Birth Day Inc. the parent company to Count The Kicks, which is an evidence-based program that teaches expecting parents the importance of monitoring their baby's movements in the third trimester. Once Ryan and I learned that the United States has one of the highest stillbirth rates of all developed countries in addition to Maternal death rates, we realized we could no longer sit still and not fight for better health care for mothers and babies. We consider ourselves Stillbirth Advocates. I recently went to Washington DC, to sit face to face with several of our nation’s Congressman and Senators to ask for their support and sign off on two bi-partisan pieces of legislation: The Stillbirth Prevention Act and The Shine for Autumn Act.
We also partner with several smaller but equally amazing organizations or charities centered around pregnancy/infancy loss and infertility. Click here to check them out.
I want this to be a space for healing and sharing information. If you want to share resources or your
story, please email HELLO@byemmakelly.com.
XOXO,
Emma Kelly
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