My name is Laura, and like many of you…I am the mom of an angel. In some ways, my story is unique…and in others, it is like so many of yours. My husband Jonathan and I are blessed to have two healthy boys and one girl. In the fall of 2021, we started trying for our third baby after our first two boys and were thrilled when we got pregnant. My first two pregnancies had been wonderfully easy, mostly revolving around eating a lot of cheeseburgers, but my third was hard from the beginning. I had horrible morning sickness, I had a small tear in my placenta and had spotting for weeks. I had a cough that turned into walking pneumonia. We checked on our baby regularly because of all those things, and we were so thankful that our baby was healthy, wiggly, and well. We found out we were expecting our third boy and named him Walker Elliott Pittman.

Because of all the extra ultrasounds and the way the holidays fell, our appointments kept falling on different weeks than my others had. At 17 weeks, we did a quick ultrasound to check on Walker because I wasn’t feeling him much yet. He was perfectly on track, sucking his thumb, and kicking his legs that were long like his brothers. My husband hadn’t been able to do to our appointments due to some Covid restrictions, so I took a video for him. I’m so thankful I did. A few weeks later, at 21 weeks, we went in for our anatomy scan and my husband was able to come – his first appointment for Walker. She put the wand on my belly, and we saw our baby right away. But after a few moments, I was the one that broke the silence. “I don’t see any wiggles.” I heard her voice catch as she said, “I don’t either…Laura, I’m so sorry, but I can’t find a heartbeat.”

She left the room to give my husband and me some privacy, and she went to get the doctor. The rest was a blur – they told me I’d need to be induced, talked through the logistics of what day and when, and finally sent us home. We had a day between our ultrasound and my induction, to make arrangements for our boys at home and to process.

That night, I remember feeling like a tsunami was taking me under. I tried to just do the next single thing that needed to be done, put one foot in front of the other, but I didn’t even know what that would be. As I wracked my brain, I remembered that someone I knew was a part of the Weighted Angels founding community. I’m a director of a preschool in Williamsburg, and I meet a lot of parents through my work. One of those had shared her story of loss with me years before. I had reached out to her previously for other families that were walking this path, to connect them with this organization. I sent her a message that said, “I never imagined I’d be reaching out for myself…but here I am. Can you help me figure out what to expect? What do I tell my boys? I feel like I’m drowning.” I’m so thankful that she immediately sent me resources, talked me through some details, helped with logistics I didn’t even know to think about, and grieved with me. They say you never know when your story might become a lifeline for someone else… and that’s exactly what that was for me. I also reached out to a group of friends and asked them to pray for me, and shared what was happening. One of them connected me with the founder of Project 11, an organization that creates small swaddles for second trimester losses, to make it easier to hold our babies after delivery. The founder shared the story of losing her own son, and how she created Project 11 in his memory. She was a total stranger that met me in the Target parking lot the night before my induction to give me a care package, who hugged me and cried with me.

On January 9, 2022, at 7:02 am, after 23 and a half hours of labor, Walker Elliot Pittman was born silently. I held my baby in a swaddle created through another mother’s grief at Project 11. I received care packages from Skylar’s Love Mission, another organization that provides support for families in the midst of loss. And I left the hospital with my Weighted Angel, a Riley giraffe, on my lap.

I am unimaginably grateful that, from the moment our world flipped upside down, we were able to reach out to those in the loss community for support. Friends, family, strangers – we were lifted up by so many. But for many of you, that was not the case. You may have endured your grief privately, choosing to keep it to yourself. Some may not have known who to reach out to – this isn’t exactly something we chat about at cocktail parties. Some had doctors or nurses that were insensitive or unsupportive. Some of you faced this alone. I was also able to find a local startup support group called Kairos Eight25 (kairos825.com) for women struggling with infertility, miscarriage, and infant loss, and I attended as many meetings as possible during my first months of loss.

But here is what I know. Today, none of us are alone. Every person has been impacted by the loss of a child – a son, a daughter, a niece or nephew, a grandchild, a loved one. Miscarriages, still births, infants, all babies gone too soon. No matter how long or how short your baby’s life… it mattered. Your baby matters. Your story matters. They are not forgotten, and we acknowledge them out loud. No footprint is too small to leave an imprint on this world. We give thanks for each and every one – for every heartbeat and every moment that they were here. We give thanks for the love that fills us when we say their names and for the ways we find hope amidst grief.