An Ohio mom of three, whose photos went viral after she posed with 20,000 bees during a maternity shoot, suffered a stillbirth.
“Yesterday evening we had to hand over our precious child and say goodbye to his physical body forever,” Emily Mueller, 33, revealed in a heartbreaking Facebook post on Monday, November 13. “Our baby has died. Our baby will never come home with us.”
Mueller was less than a week from her due date on Thursday when she noticed her baby’s movements had changed. “I just told myself he was sleeping,” she wrote. But at 2:30 a.m. Mueller woke up in a panic over the “lack of elbows and knees” she had been feeling.
That morning, the bee keeper and her husband, Ryan Mueller, 37, drove to the Barberton Hospital Maternity Ward.
“I truly thought we would be sent home with a smile, telling us to just wait for the arrival of our sweet Emersyn,” Mueller shared. But the nurses couldn’t find a heartbeat. “They moved it, added more gel, moved it again . . . They tried and tried.”
Emersyn had passed.
“I can’t and don’t want to explain that feeling to anyone,” Mueller wrote. “Turning to your husband seeing him die inside. Seeing him completely break . . . the pain is unbearable. I wish I could remove the screen image in my mind of seeing the black, lifeless heart on the [ultrasound] screen.”
Mueller was induced and gave birth to her deceased baby with the support of an “amazing” midwife and “phenomenal” nurses. “They cried with us. Every. Single. One,” she noted. She also praised Sufficient Grace Ministries who provided two birth doulas trained in bereavement: “They had an answer for every question we asked, whether it was what we wanted to hear or not. They stayed with us from beginning to end at the cost of absolutely nothing.”
In her post, Mueller said she sent the placenta in for testing, but “has a strong feeling” that Emersyn died from a blood clotting disorder that has caused other members of her family to suffer miscarriages.
“Thank you for all of those who have called, texted and messaged us,” she wrote. “Just knowing people are thinking about us and hurting with us relieves so much of our pain.”
Mueller took to Facebook on Friday morning to assure people the the “bee picture” taken on August 28 had nothing to do with Emersyn’s death on November 11. “This was my third full term pregnancy as a beekeeper,” she explained. “Bee stings do not cause the stillbirth of a child.”
She continued: “My sweet Emersyn did not pass from me being a beekeeper or having bees on my body. In fact, if there was such a risk to your unborn child dying from a sting, pregnant women would be advised to never leave their home. To never walk barefoot. To never have a picnic. To never drink a can of soda outside or take a walk in the woods. This ignorance is disgusting to see.”
