Chris Onorato, Ashley Miller open up about heartbreaking loss of baby Nash
NewsChannel 13’s Chris Onorato and his wife, former NewsChannel 13 sports anchor-reporter Ashley Miller, experienced a tragic loss at the beginning of 2024.
Nash Weston Onorato would have turned 1-year-old next month. Tragically, he’s not physically here, but the intense love from his adoring parents is palpable.
Ashley and Chris were about two weeks away from their due date. She had no issues all throughout her pregnancy.
She had a routine check-up on January 12 of this year.
“They checked his heartbeat, and his heartbeat was 140 beats a minute, which is average. It’s what it was almost every time we had gone in,” said Ashley.
Two days later, everything changed.
“That was a Sunday night. We had friends over, we were watching football and I’d gone to the bathroom, and I started bleeding,” said Ashley.
She thought she was going into labor when they got to the hospital. They heard the most devastating news of their lives. Nash did not have a heartbeat. He was gone.
There are no words to describe that moment.
“You almost black out, like, I started to sweat,” Ashley said.
“I think you just go numb. You get angry. You are confused,” Chris said.
Doctors performed a C-section, and Chris and Ashley finally got to see Nash for the first time.
“He was a fully grown baby boy, 7 ½ pounds, 21 inches, full head of hair, little fingernails and I mean, he looked like he was already to be in this world,” said Chris.
“It was hard to, like, try to feel that emotional attachment when he didn’t open his eyes and, like, give you that love back,” Ashley said.
They spent 17 precious hours with their son, holding him, rocking him, reading to him.
“I wanted to remember, you know, his weight, how he smelled,” said Chris.
Then they did the hardest thing they’ve ever had to do. They handed Nash to a funeral director.
“That moment breaks you,” said Chris. “You know, our faith tells us ultimately that one day we’re going to hold him again. We’re going to see him again, and so that’s what we hang on to,” said Chris.
Meanwhile, people who don’t know what happened ask questions:
“How’s the baby? What did you have a boy or a girl? How’s Ashley doing as a mother,” said Chris, as he talked about the questions he and Ashley still get.
“It’s the most devastating news of your life,” Ashley added. “Getting to the point where we wanted to share that publicly. It took us a long time.”
