In the early spring of 2011, we were surprised to find out that we were expecting again for the third time. After the initial shock, we began to plan for baby #3. We found out we were having another girl and the pregnancy was going great. At 30 weeks, the baby suddenly stopped moving and on August 17th, Leslie delivered our sleeping angel. We named her Aubree Lauren Kirby. We think that having Run4Raley to put all of our energy into is what helped us to keep moving forward after losing Raley and we never dreamed we’d have to yet again find a way to cope with such a devastating loss.
We found ourselves feeling the same similar feelings that we did after losing Raley. The only thing we could do to get through this was to do something in Aubree’s memory. Losing Aubree was different than losing Raley. With Raley, Leslie delivered what we thought was a healthy baby until we quickly found out she was sick after being born. With Aubree, we never really got to be her parents, never got to see her eyes and never got to hear her cry. Because we had unfortunately been through losing a child before, we knew that there were things we wanted to do to preserve the few moments that we were able to have with her.
We decided that since we have experience with losing a child, we want to make sure that any family that has to endure this tragedy is given the materials they need to preserve those few precious moments with their babies. We are working with a local hospital to put kits together that provides these families with everything that they may need to keep those memories treasured forever. We are going off of the numbers that this hospital has kept track of within the past year and we are wanting to donate 100 of these memory kits annually so that they can be handed out to any family that suffers this life altering tragedy. We want to deliver hope to these families that they will be able to get through it and come out stronger all in remembrance of Aubree. Thus, we want to deliver Hope4Aubree.
This project is being funded by money that we make from the raffle through Run4Raley.
If you would like to make a donation to Hope4Aubree that will be put towards making new kits, please send your donation to:
Hope4Aubree
508 S. Harrison Street
Philo, IL 61864
You can also find us at: www.facebook.com/Hope4Aubree