Influencer Ashley Stock has welcomed a baby five years after her young daughter died of brain cancer at 3 years old.
Stock, 40, who is known for her Little Miss Momma blog, took to Instagram on Tuesday, July 1, to announce daughter Benny’s arrival via surrogate.
“She’s beautiful and fierce and cuddly and tiny and magical and smells like heaven and we are overwhelmed with love! Nicole did amazing!” she wrote. “Benny will be in the NICU for likely at least a week with jaundice and she potentially inherited a blood disorder that [my husband] Ben [Stock] also has.”
Ashley added: “But she’s doing great and is being taken care of by the most amazing team of nurses and doctors ❤️.”
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The content creator also shares sons Wesley and Sawyer with her husband, Ben. After Benny’s arrival, the family documented themselves spending time with her in the NICU.
“Mommy finally got some skin to skin time in the NICU with Benny and I think it was exactly what we both needed. Those dimples though 🥹,” Ashley captioned an Instagram clip after publicly thanking her surrogate, Nicole.
In response to online concern, Ashley clarified why her baby was in the NICU.
“Benny was born at 36 weeks with ABO incompatiblity and also likely has hereditary spherocytosis,” she noted. “Both of these caused a VERY high bilirubin at birth which got her a ticket to the NICU.”
Hereditary spherocytosis is an inherited blood disorder that causes hemolytic anemia, according to the Cleveland Clinic. The resulting anemia is caused by red blood cells breaking down faster than normal.
Ashley and Ben expanded their family five years after their daughter Stevie died after being diagnosed with a rare brain tumor.
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“For now, I’m overwhelmed with relief that she’s at peace but I’m also feeling crushed by a pain so intense I can’t put it into words,” Ashley wrote via Instagram in May 2020. “I let it out a bit at a time, like when you gently twist the lid off a liter soda bottle… releasing the built up pressure a little at a time to keep it from exploding all over the place. I guess it’s like that. I’m twisting the lid on my grief gently. Because if I release it all at once, I don’t see how I could possibly survive.”
She continued: “We have complete faith in there being a greater purpose of this tragedy (and it’s already unfolding through your stories of renewed hope), but unfortunately, faith is not a ‘get out of pain free’ card, and that’s okay.”
Ashley noted that Stevie’s tumor was “a form of cancer called DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma). And it has a 0% survival rate.”
“We are shattered. Broken. Gutted. Somehow my body continues to produce tears and ugly crying has become my only release,” she wrote one month before Stevie’s death at age 3.
