Flying for Time
We are SO excited to share our secret project with all of you!! We've only been working on it for a few weeks now, but I feel like I've been keeping it a secret forever. That changes now!
After a baby is born still, their skin can start to quickly deteriorate. The cooler the temperature around them, the longer their body is preserved for. When we lost Carter, exactly 46 weeks ago today, our nurse kindly offered to take him back and forth between our room and a chilled room where his body could be kept for short periods of time, to allow us more time with him. Neither Brandon nor I wanted to let him go, and we agreed that saying goodbye once would be hard enough, so we kept him in the room with us for a few hours until we decided it was time to say goodbye.
Weeks later, as we immersed ourselves more in the loss community, we learned about the CuddleCot, a cooling pad that can be placed in a bassinet or cradle at the hospital in the same room as the parents. The CuddleCot keeps a baby's body cool, and therefore preserved longer, so that the parents can have more time without letting them out of their sight. I don't know if the hospital we were at even had a CuddleCot on hand, but it would have been nice to have, so we could have had even just a few more minutes with our boy.
We'd like to give the gift of time to other parents whose babies are gone too soon.
Flying for Time, the name of our project, has the sole purpose of providing more time to parents who already do not have enough. We will be selling airplane necklaces in remembrance of Carter, and putting the proceeds toward the purchase of a CuddleCot, which will be donated to a hospital of our choice. If necklaces aren't your thing, we will happily accept simple donations.
The cost of a CuddleCot is roughly $3,000, but you can't put a price on spending more time with your child before saying goodbye. Thank you in advance for your generosity. We, and so many parents like us, are eternally grateful.