CuddleCot in Memory of Baby Blayne

On November 7, 2017 our son Steven Blayne Jones-Johnson, "Baby Blayne", was born sleeping at 8:23AM. He was a perfect 8lb 8oz. Sadly, his heart had stopped beating the day before and we knew he would be stillborn. We were able to keep him with us for roughly four hours before we had to give his body up.
 
After losing our son, I became part of a few Facebook groups for moms that have had stillborn children. I found so much support from these women, but I also found out so much information that I wish I had known before losing Blayne. In the United States, a miscarriage is usually defined as loss of a baby before the 20th week of pregnancy, while a stillbirth is loss of a baby after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Stillbirth effects about 1% of all pregnancies, and each year about 24,000 babies are stillborn in the United States. There are very few things we can do to decrease this statistic, but I hope that bringing awareness to stillbirth will help moms pay attention to their baby's movement patterns and other signs that their baby could be in distress. Since stillbirths will unfortunately continue to happen, our goal is to help families be able to cope with this tragedy.

The problem is that in a warm room, the baby’s condition can deteriorate quickly, therefore cooling the baby is absolutely essential. Transferring to and from the morgue is now widely regarded as an outdated practice as it is traumatic for parents to repeatedly go through the separation process, whereas the CuddleCot allows the family to spend every last moment with their baby- precious moments where every minute counts. The CuddleCot system cools the baby, allowing families to stay with their baby before being moved to the morgue, and is in use in thousands of hospitals across the world.

We want to donate a CuddleCot to a local hospital in memory of our son Blayne in honor of his first birthday coming up. We want to give a family that has lost their baby like we did just a little bit more time to say goodbye. Hearing the words “ I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat” was the worst moment of our lives. No one should have to go through the kind of pain and sadness of losing a child. No mom should have to go through delivering their baby they know will never cry. No Dad should have to drive home with an empty car seat. No family should have an empty nursery because their baby died. Unfortunately we can’t take this pain away, nor can we make sure every baby lives. But what we can do is give these families moments with their baby that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Time to make memories, take pictures and memorize every inch of their baby's beautiful face.

We hope that you will help us give this precious opportunity to these families, and we appreciate your consideration towards gifting this CuddleCot to help us honor Baby Blayne for his first birthday.