Former NFL player Patrick Murtagh and his partner, influencer Hannah Orval, celebrated a bittersweet second anniversary after the death of their newborn son.
“2 years with my best friend,” Orval, 27, shared via her Instagram Story on Sunday, August 9. “Long distance. 10’s of thousands of [kilometers]. A tremendous amount of flights. Different cities. Numerous homes. Countless trials and tribulations.”
She added, “But an abundance of laughs, love and experiences 🤍✨.”
The post came less than two weeks after the couple announced the loss of their son, Meelo, shortly after childbirth. In a separate Instagram slide on Sunday, Orval honored their son’s legacy on their anniversary.
“May Meelo always be the greatest part of us 🤍,” she wrote.
Orval and Murtagh, 25, posted about the loss of their newborn baby on July 31.
“Meelo Michael Murtagh, born into this big world early and sleeping. 🤍👼 ,” the couple shared in a joint Instagram post. “He will forever be the biggest missing piece of the rest of our story. To be a family for even just for a day was irreplaceable. Childbirth, I would do it over again every day in every lifetime to meet him. We are absolutely devastated, but forever our biggest achievement in life 🪽.”
Last year, Orval suffered a miscarriage while pregnant with the couple’s daughter, which she revealed after announcing being pregnant with Meelo.
“From the outside it can feel like everyone is blessed with their pregnancies, able to carry a child time after time without struggle,” Orval shared via Instagram in May. “Though I have come to understand it is just that we don’t talk about the other side of it. And personally we couldn’t at the time either so I understand why. But now I want to bring light to something that I hope no two people ever feel alone in again.”
She continued, “Last year we were so excited to be having our daughter. Our first child, our first pregnancy. We also then simultaneously carried the grief of a missed miscarriage. Unfortunately at our 12.5 week scan we were made aware her heartbeat could no longer be found. She had unfortunately stopped growing the week prior & I had shown no signs of miscarriage. My body had not told me in any way so we were utterly shocked by the news.”
Orval explained that the pregnancy loss had a “profound” impact on her life.
“I craved the comfort of knowing other people had the same struggle, the same story,” she wrote. “Though I didn’t want that experience for anyone else, I did want to know it wasn’t my fault, that I was not alone. I did everything right? Why us? I think that it is unfortunately far more common than a lot of us understand, and that is a thought that saddens me.”
Orval added, “By no means share this to scare anyone but I do want people to feel seen, to understand it is not their fault. They aren’t alone in that story, that grief or that loneliness.”
Murtagh, a former Australian rules football star, joined the NFL through its International Player Pathway Program in 2024. He spent time with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Denver Broncos, but never saw any game action.
