Faced with the reality they would come home from the hospital without a baby, Erin and Tony Maroon were left in a fog of confusion and grief.
“Our pregnancy was perfect, no issues, nothing to be alarmed about,” said Mrs. Maroon, of North Canton. “We were expecting to bring home a healthy, living baby.”
Doctors later determined it was an umbilical cord injury that caused the death of their child.
After Mrs. Maroon delivered a stillborn Ashlie Cathren in 2015, she searched the Internet: How to come home to an empty nursery?
She read about CuddleCot, a $3,000 device that allows families to spend more time with a stillborn infant after birth, and later founded the nonprofit Ashlie’s Embrace with a mission to get one in every hospital in the United States.
On Thursday, she delivered a CuddleCot to Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center, donated by the parents of another Ohio couple who lost a daughter in 2017. Leslie and Andrew Burman of Minerva, Ohio, donated the device in memory of Willow Irene Burman.
The cooling bed preserves the infant’s body for up to 96 hours, allowing families to gather, take pictures, and begin the grieving process. It can be used for stillbirths or infants who die shortly after birth. The cot helps families start a grief process that often begins suddenly, Mrs. Maroon said.
“Everyone tells you what to do when you when you come home with your baby, but no one tells you what to do when you don’t,” she said. “I think this will allow them that time to start to be able to make sense of what just happened.”
Preliminary data show there were 28 stillbirths in Lucas County last year, according to the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department. The same number were reported in 2017. About 1 in 160 deliveries are stillbirths in the United States, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
These deaths are not included in the state’s infant mortality statistics, which count babies who die before their first birthdays. In 2017, 53 Lucas County infants died.
Paula Samples, clinical nurse manager for the neonatal intensive care for Mercy Health Children’s Hospital, said the hospital sees about 40 such losses per year, both stillbirths or babies who die after delivery. The CuddleCot will be integrated into existing services for families, which include mementos, photos, and an annual memorial service.
“Some parents don’t initially know they want to spend more time with their baby,” she said. “They’re in shock ... and then realize, ‘This is it, I need to spend more time.’ This will give them time to process it.”
The St. Vincent donation marked the 30th cot facilitated by Ashlie’s Embrace, with 20 more pending. For more information about the organization, visit ashliesembrace.org.
First Published February 21, 2019, 6:33 p.m.
