In Memory of Colden Reed: A Journey to Happiness

Sweet Baby Anna

Molly Baab is a member of the Boston Family Team Committee and a committed volunteer of the March of Dimes (and a computer whiz who helped with this blog). In Memory of Colden Reed is a top Boston Family Team and this is why they walk:

My beautiful daughter Anna is just ten weeks old. My husband and I are so grateful that she is home and healthy after spending her first month of life in the NICU. Sadly, though, she will never get to meet her brother, our first child, who we named Colden after a beautiful mountain in New York State.
On December 17, 2008, when I was almost 35 weeks pregnant with Colden, I went into early labor. I didn’t know that my water had actually broken days earlier and that my precious son had a massive infection. When we got to the hospital we got the news that no parent ever wants to hear, that he was already gone. There was nothing they could do.
When I showed up at the hospital in labor that day I didn’t know that stillbirth still existed. I thought it was something that happened in the Nineteenth Century or earlier. I later learned that there are more than 26,0000 stillbirths each year in the US and about half of them have no known cause.
Our doctors and nurses were amazingly good; they did all they could to care for us, but my husband and I were devastated. I felt like my life stopped while the world around me continued as before. Friends and family didn’t know how to help and no one knew what to say. The grief does not go away, but one of the things that most helped my slow healing process was the March for Babies. I started our family team, in Memory of Colden Reed, because I wanted to remember my son through positive action, I wanted to see the day that no new family hears the awful news that their child is sick or worse, and I needed to find a way to talk about his loss and allow others to care for us.
With the help of wonderful family and friends, our team has raised more than $25,000 towards this mission. This will be our third year walking in Colden’s memory, and our first with a stroller. With my second pregnancy I recognized the symptoms of premature labor so I was admitted to the hospital after my water broke early again. Anna was born at 32 weeks and 4 days. She spent 31 days in the NICU and thanks to the many medical advances that the March of Dimes has helped to develop, she is a very healthy baby today.