Celeste had a perfect pregnancy.
She felt great. She stayed active all the way to term. Every appointment, every ultrasound, every check was textbook. The nursery was painted pink, because Hannes had opened the can by himself two days after their appointment, on camera, finding out the gender before Celeste so he could have something special just for him. The bassinet was next to the bed. The car seat was in the car. The postpartum cart was stocked with diapers and snacks.
Ellory was 40 weeks and one day old when Celeste woke up feeling a little crampy and tired. She decided to rest, and fell asleep with her hands on her belly, feeling Ellory kick. And then something shifted.
Just a feeling. Something telling her she needed to get Ellory to move. She ate spoonfuls of Nutella. She tried different positions. She called Hannes and said, something’s wrong. It had only been two hours since she had last felt her move when she arrived at the ER. A nurse put a monitor on her belly and couldn’t find the heartbeat, and Celeste already knew.
There was no heartbeat.
Ellory had grown to 7 pounds and 3 ounces. A big, healthy, beautiful baby girl who made it all the way to the finish line. She just couldn’t cross it.
In the weeks and months after losing her, Celeste used her medical background to research. She was not going to accept unexplained as an answer. She found a Yale researcher named Dr. Kleiman who studies stillbirth and small placentas. She looked back at Ellory’s placental pathology report and discovered the placenta was in the .02 percentile. Ellory’s placenta was simply too small to sustain her life. No one had measured it. It is not standard of care to measure a placenta during prenatal ultrasounds — even though the capability is built into the machines, even though the measurement takes 30 seconds and 3 numbers, even though a small placenta is the most common cause of stillbirth, and even though 50% of term stillbirths are preventable.
Out of that discovery came the Racing Awareness for Ellory campaign. Hannes is running 12 marathons in 12 months, in cities across the country and beyond. At each race, he carries a pair of Ellory’s shoes. And right before the finish line, he drops them. Because she got all the way there. She just couldn’t cross.
At a race in Asheville, a stranger who had read their flyer approached Hannes after the finish and asked, are you Ellory’s dad? Hannes had to have him repeat it. He had never been called that by a stranger before. He said yes. Yeah, I am.
That is everything, right there.
To learn more about Celeste and Hannes’s campaign and the work of the nonprofit Measure the Placenta, visit measuretheplacenta.org. You can find their podcast, The Leisure Room, and follow their journey on social media at The Kiddos Diaries.
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