The Hope & Hearts event is special day to run, walk & give families hope! This event is about acknowledging together the lives of those whom we miss and hold dear. We honor the lives of babies and children who are in heaven, and come together to heal as a community and to say these precious babies and children will never be forgotten.

The event also helps to raise awareness about pregnancy and infant loss along with the needed funds for Missing GRACE Foundation to provide free services and support for grieving, infertile and adoptive families. Bereaved parents and their loved ones are invited to create a team page to tell their story and to raise funds.

Here's our story...We lost our baby girl at 16 weeks gestation. We started 2013 with a cruise to get one last vacation in before starting a family. When we returned, we got pregnant right away. We were so excited. The excitment quickly turned into hesitation the day after the first Doctor's appointment. A subchorionic hematoma caused bleeding and during the ultrasound, a uternine septum was also discovered. The baby was fine, but the spetum was a scary discovery. Typically septums can problems in the first trimester (a miscarriage) or in the third trimester (breeched, early labor) so we had extra monitoring. Septums can be removed, but that can not be done while pregnant. Everything was still going well at the 12 week appointment, so we thought we were in the clear. We started dreaming about who this baby would be, planning the nursery and thinking of names. Our world crumbled when we learned our baby no longer had a heartbeat at our 16 week appointment. We later learned that the septum was extremely large and I had a blood clotting disorder, both of which could have contributed to the miscarriage. Over the next year, I underwent three surgeries to remove the septum, and a plan was in place for me to be on blood thinners during all future pregnancies. The surgeries and blood thinners were successful, giving us two boys. We will always wonder who our baby girl, Gabriel, would have been. Do her brothers look like she would have? What would she have thought about her brothers? Would she have grown up to be a swimmer or played hockey? Would she have loved the cats or would she have begged us for a dog? Would her eyes have been as big and brown as her mom's? Would her hair have been thick and dark like her dad's? She was first a dream, then a reality and now a memory.

Here's why we are raising funds...To honor her. To remember her. To raise awarenes so others don't feel alone. To allow Missing Grace to continue their services to families who are going through the unimaginable. You will never understand until it happens to you. We hope no one ever has to go through this but we know that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss, so we want all those families to find the support they need.