Our Story
Before there was Ashlie’s Embrace, there was Ashlie.
Waiting for Ashlie
Our lives changed forever in February 2015 when we found out we were expecting our first child. We nicknamed our little Gummy Bear Ashlie Cathren, and from the beginning, we couldn’t wait to meet her.
I was fortunate to have a healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy. No morning sickness, no high blood pressure, no unusual cravings. Everything progressed just as it should, and as the months passed, we prepared for the life we imagined bringing our daughter home to.
On the morning of October 27, 2015, I was 41 weeks and one day pregnant. I went to my doctor for a fetal non-stress test and ultrasound to make sure Ashlie was doing well and that there was enough amniotic fluid to safely continue waiting for her arrival. Everything looked good. My induction was scheduled for six days later, unless Ashlie decided to make her appearance on her own first.
About ten hours later, I was relaxing on the couch when I felt a giant kick. I didn’t know then that it would be the last movement I would ever feel from her.
An hour or so later, I realized Ashlie wasn’t active. I lay still, trying to ignore the panic beginning to rise and willing her to move. When she didn’t, Tony and I rushed to the hospital.
An ultrasound showed our daughter’s motionless back on the screen.
There was no heartbeat.
Meeting Ashlie
Those words began the most difficult hours of our lives.
Doctors immediately began the induction process. I was in and out of sleep after two failed epidurals, trying to process the impossible reality that I was still going to give birth to our daughter, but we would never hear her cry.
After 24 hours of labor, I had a C-section. Ashlie Cathren was born on October 28, 2015, weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces and measuring 22¾ inches long.
When Ashlie was born, there was no sound. No baby crying. No happy shouts of excitement. Just sadness and silence. Deafening silence.
As they prepared to take me from the operating room, a nurse asked if I wanted to hold our baby. I choked out a “yes,” and for the first time, I held our daughter in my arms as they wheeled me back to my room.
She was beautiful. She had a pouty Cupid’s bow, a perfect little nose, tiny ears and fingers, and a head full of dark hair. She was our first child, our daughter, and in those moments we were simply her parents trying to take in every detail we could.
An organization came to take photographs of Ashlie, giving us images of our daughter that would become some of our most treasured possessions. Our family had a chance to meet her and hold her, too.
But after 24 hours of labor, surgery, medication and overwhelming grief, exhaustion took over. I had held Ashlie for less than 30 minutes when I became afraid I might drop her. I handed our perfect baby girl to my mom and fell asleep.
At the time, I didn’t understand just how precious those few minutes would become.
Less Than One Hour
The next afternoon, I asked Tony if I could see Ashlie again. He brought her back to my room from the hospital’s cold room, where she had been kept since I last held her.
She was ice cold.
Less than 15 hours after she was born, the extreme temperature had already begun to change her delicate features. Her pouty Cupid’s bow, her perfect nose, and her tiny ears and fingers looked different than they had the day before. Tony asked me not to unwrap her blankets, knowing I wouldn’t want to remember her that way.
So I didn’t.
I never saw her feet or the little body hidden beneath those blankets. I never changed her clothes or gave her a bath. I never felt her soft baby skin against mine. Tony never had the opportunity to hold her close the way he wanted to, either.
The nurses had told us we could see Ashlie whenever we wanted, but we didn’t understand what that meant. There was no bassinet in my room and no way to keep her safely with us, so I assumed she wasn’t supposed to stay. We didn’t know there could be another option.
After about 20 minutes, I kissed every feature I could see and handed our daughter back to Tony. He carried her from the room.
I never saw Ashlie again.
For two more days, I lay in that hospital without my daughter, believing that was my only choice.
In all, we spent less than one hour with our first child.
At the time, we were grieving parents trying to navigate something we never imagined could happen. We didn’t know what to ask for. We didn’t know what choices should have been available to us.
We only knew how desperately we wished we had been given more time.
Discovering the CuddleCot™
As I prepared to leave the hospital without my daughter, I started searching online for information about stillbirth. I Googled “Coming home to an empty nursery” and I came across an article that mentioned something I had never heard of before: a CuddleCot™.
A CuddleCot is a specially designed cooling unit that gently cools a baby while allowing them to remain in a bassinet with their family. Instead of having to repeatedly move a baby to and from a hospital cold room, parents can keep their child close, giving them more time together before saying goodbye.
I remember reading about it and becoming angry.
Why hadn’t we had one?
If a CuddleCot had been available, Ashlie could have stayed in our room. We could have held her when we wanted to. Tony could have held her close. We could have unwrapped her blankets and seen her tiny feet. We could have bathed her, changed her clothes, taken more photographs, and simply spent time being her parents.
Maybe I would have had a few more hours to memorize her.
Maybe we would have had days.
Nothing could have changed the fact that our daughter had died. A CuddleCot could not have taken away our grief or made leaving the hospital without Ashlie any less devastating.
But it could have given us something we could never get back.
Time.
The more I thought about how little time we had with our first child, the more I knew other families deserved a different experience.
We couldn’t change what happened to us.
But maybe we could change what happened next for someone else.
Pictured: Erin and Tony celebrate Ashlie’s Embrace officially becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 2016.
Pictured: The very first Ashlie’s Embrace Board meeting with the co-founders and the organization’s first Board member, Mandi.
Pictured: Erin attends the national AWHONN conference to represent Ashlie’s Embrace and advocate for the use of bereavement cooling devices after stillbirth and infant loss.
Pictured: Dedication plaque from the first CuddleCot™ donated by Ashlie’s Embrace, placed in memory of Ashlie Cathren Maroon in 2016.
From Grief to Action
Once I learned about the CuddleCot™, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Tony and I had spent less than one hour with our daughter, and I couldn’t accept that other parents might someday leave a hospital carrying the same regrets we did simply because the right resources weren’t available.
What began as anger quickly became determination.
If our hospital didn’t have a CuddleCot, we would raise the money to give them one. And if other hospitals didn’t have them either, we would help those hospitals too.
In 2016, we founded Ashlie’s Embrace in memory of our daughter and began building a community around a simple belief: families experiencing stillbirth or infant loss deserve time with their baby and the opportunity to say goodbye in their own way.
A Full Circle Moment
On September 7, 2016, that belief became something tangible when we donated our very first CuddleCot to Cleveland Clinic Akron General, the same hospital where Ashlie had been born less than a year earlier.
We walked back into the hospital carrying something we desperately wished had been there for us.
That first cooling unit couldn’t change our experience or give us back the time we lost with Ashlie. But it meant another family walking into that hospital could have choices we didn’t.
They could have more time.
And one hospital was only the beginning.
Pictured: Erin and Tony donate the first CuddleCot at Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital.
Ashlie’s Legacy
We cannot change the time we lost with Ashlie. We cannot go back and hold her longer, make the memories we didn’t know we were missing, or make different choices with information we simply didn’t have.
But we can make sure her story continues to create change.
Today, Ashlie’s name can be found on cooling units in hospitals far beyond the room where we first held her. Her story has reached families we will never meet and communities we never imagined reaching when we began this journey.
There is a gravestone in Ohio bearing our daughter’s name, marking the place where her short life is remembered. But her legacy reaches far beyond it.
It lives in every family given another hour to hold their baby. Every parent given the opportunity to take one more photograph, introduce their child to someone they love, or simply sit together a little longer. Every hospital better prepared to support a family through an unimaginable goodbye.
Ashlie never came home with us.
But in her own way, she has traveled farther than we ever could have imagined.
And through the mission that carries her name, she continues to give other families the one thing we wished so desperately we had been given.
More time.
