I cannot believe this will be our 4th time participating in the Hope & Hearts Walk! We were at the first in 2006, the year we lost Curtis, and are honored to participate again this year. I am also proud to say our team was the one who started the "Team" tshirts in honor of Curtis, now so many other families make Team tshirts for their babies and it makes me so proud we were the first to have the idea in 2006 and to see so many others honor their babies year after year is amazing. In total for the past walks Team Curtis has raised over $4,000 for Missing GRACE Foundation (MGF). I know it isn't as much as some of those top teams, but each dollar is in memory of my son and I am honored so many people help us remember him.

Most people who are reading this know our story, but I would love to share a little bit about Curtis with you anyway. 

On the morning of May 31st, 2006, I was 40 weeks pregnant with our first baby, a boy. At a routine appointment that day , we found out his heart no longer beat under mine. Labor was induced, and on 5:31pm on 5/31/2006, our little boy silently entered our lives. After 40 weeks of eagerly anticipating adding to our family, we had to say goodbye to our baby boy. One we never heard cry, one we never saw open his eyes. May 31st 2006 will never be our worst day, we got to meet our son. But saying goodbye to him is a pain we carry, a pain that will never subside.

Curtis was a 100% healthy baby boy. His death was ruled a cord accident. Simply, in his last few days of life he didn't receive enough oxgyen and slowly passed away inside of me without me ever knowing he was in distress.

In the days, weeks, months and years afterward Craig and I have strived to find ways to honor and remember Curtis. We have been blessed with family and friends who have"gotten" this and helped up remember him. Losing Curtis shattered us. Craig and I were a newly married couple and neither of us had dealt with death before, much less of a child. In our grief, we found Missing GRACE.

Missing GRACE is a  foundation who has touched our hearts in more ways than I can ever begin to explain. Some parents get to celebrate their children for birthdays and holidays....for us the walk each year is our time to celebrate our boy. It is an amazing feeling when someone donates in memory of Curtis. Big or small...it doesn't matter. What matters if you remembering our son with us.

When we lost Curtis, we lost hope. He was our first child and it was hard to imagine a time where we would be able to begin again. I had spent 40 weeks pregnant, anticipating our son, and came home empty handed.  Thanks to Missing GRACE, we have been able to remember our sweet little boy and expand our family.

Craig and I have benefitted greatly from Missing GRACE. We have been able to attend their support groups, meet other grieving familes and participate in various events such as their conferences and the 5K Run/Walk in honor of our 1st born.

One of the most important things we have taken from Missing GRACE is learning about fetal home monitoring. A service provided that allows pregnant women who have suffed a loss due to a cord issue, like Curtis, to recieve extra monitoring in her last trimester. With our daughter, we participated in this research. We were able to check in with my pregnancy each night as the research doctor and my OB kept a close eye.

Claudia was, too, born with a cord issue. However, she was born screaming thanks to the extra care we received.  We truly believed we could have as easily lost her as we did Curtis. But thanks to the knowledge we have learned through MGF, we didn't. We have her here with us. Destroying the living room and being a typical toddler. We love every moment.

Without the MGF, we would have never known about the home monitoring program nor would we have found an OB who was willing to sit, hold our hands, and listen to our concerns. Our doctor holds such a special place on our hearts and we would have never known about her without Missing GRACE.

How do I even begin to thank a foundation who helped get our daughter here alive?

As I write this, I am currently 29 weeks pregnant with a little baby boy. Our second son.  We recently traveled to Louisiana to start to work with the hime monitoring program and learned this little guy has a cord issue. As you can imagine, this has shook us as we lost Curtis to a cord issue and Claudia was showing signs of distress due to a cord isue and needed to come early. Though I am filled with just as much anxiety as I had with Claudia's pregnancy, we know that our plan worked last time. We got our screaming baby here and we look forward to a repeat performance in October. We look forward to completing our family. With a son in our hearts and a daughter and son in our arms.

Thank you, Missing GRACE, for everything you have done for my family and for families around the world. Though we know the inevitable will happen, babies will be lost, we know the work you are doing is helping those families and saving babies, like Claudia, in the process.

Money donated to Team Curtis will go to the Missing GRACE Foundation and will be used to help grieving families and will be used to continue the work towards stillbirth prevention. Missing GRACE has so many wonderful services, I cannot begin to list them all. Please visit www.missingGRACE.org. They are publishing a fundraising book with stories from loss parents and a story I wrote about Curtis and Claudia will be included. We are so excited !

For more info on our sweet baby boy, to see pictures and the many things we have done in his memory, please visit: http://curtis-roger.memory-of.com/About.aspx 

If anyone would like to join Team Curtis this year, we would love it! The more, the merrier. Last year we have our biggest turn out with my friends joining us and the addition of Leah, who was just 2 days old at the time! I will make you a Team tshirt at no cost to you.

Thank you for your past donations and any donations you make this year. We look forward to September and remembering our sweet boy. We love and miss him.

Love, Chantel, Craig, and Claudia

We are richer, by far, to have held you a moment than to have never held you at all.