Our Mission
Footprints On My Heart, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to providing services to parents and their families who have suffered a miscarriage, perinatal, or infant loss.
We are there from the moment Mom gets the news of her loss to help her navigate through what is to come. We provide many services (see Services tab) to our families. We are their support from the very beginning. We are a resource for families while helping them obtain services they will need.
How Footprints On My Heart was Founded
told by our founder/president, Raynna Hammon
Our journey started June 26th, 2018, when that little test showed two blue lines. We are a blended family of eight. We decided to "try" for another child once we knew we were able to legally adopt our youngest. We found out that we were finally expecting June 26th, 2018 making our due date March 10th, 2019.
On September 14th, 2018, we went to our first high risk pregnancy appointment. We were only 13 weeks, so ultrasound was limited. We needed to make the biweekly trips to Orlando for my pregnancy because on September 24th, 2008, we had a stillborn at 21 weeks. We named that beautiful one pound, blonde haired, baby girl, Sophia Louise. The loss of our first born was devastating in itself and now we were faced with the same horrid path with our son.
On October 12th, 2018, we found out that there was a abnormality with our son’s brain. When we went back for a follow up the results we were given crumbled our world . Our precious unborn baby boy had a life threatening diagnosis. We were given a week to decide what to do with his life as I only had a 1 cm x 1 cm pocket of amniotic fluid to keep him safe. We went back a week later to find the small pocket of fluid had disappeared. Our already crumbled world felt even smaller, as the room began to close in on us. We were now faced with making the decision of being induced or continue with my pregnancy. Without a shadow of a doubt, we would fight for him so he could grow stronger, until we can hold him in our arms. The only thing we could do was pray that he would take his first breath.
We started incorporating the theme of his nursery in everything we did, red and black buffalo print with deer antlers. We started memory making and had our first family photos done, focusing them on my belly and having us all match with that buffalo print as accents. Our children helped me decorate our Christmas tree that year in buffalo print with deer antlers and red and black ornaments.
Our perfect brown hair brown eyed baby boy, Jaxon Thomas Hammon was born on January 24th, 2019, at 5:51 am via emergency c-section. I was only 33 weeks 4 days and labored to 9cm. He weighed 5 lbs 11 ozs and was 19 1/4 inches long. Due to not having any amniotic fluid his lungs were not able to mature enough. Even with the assistance from steroid shots his lungs were still not strong enough.
It's with deepest sorrow that Jaxon passed away shortly after delivery in the operating room with my husband and I. Seeing him for the first time was overpowering with emotions while I got to hold my baby boy in my arms for the first time. The only thing I could do, was tell him how much I loved him and how sorry I was that he couldn't come home with me. He opened his eye while I was talking to him and stared at me while making sweet cooing noises. As the nurse took him from me and passed him to my husband, I just wanted to climb off that operating table and hold my two boys. Seeing my husband crushed with the look of hopelessness in his eyes was so hard to witness. To see the man that holds our family together, who is supposed to be the strongest person and the protector of our family, to see him hopelessly holding our son, as he took his last breath, was numbing. I remember constantly looking over my shoulder at the two of them, waiting for my husband to tell me he took a breath, but that moment never came.
They wheeled me to two different rooms before our children were able to come and see us. The one thing that I prayed I’d never have to say to our children, I had to say with their lifeless brother on my chest, that their brother didn’t take his first breath and was now in heaven with their Nonnie. Seeing the confusion on their faces trying to understand why he was still physically here but his spirit was in heaven was emotional.
Three months after our tragic loss of our sweet Jaxon Thomas, my family and I brainstormed on how we could keep Jaxon’s legacy alive.
I know we can make the most impact by helping parents and families who are going through the same heartache as my family experienced. Footprints On My Heart is the best way to pass along our collective resources and help take out a little bit of the confusion and unknowns from the parents and families upside down world. Even though Jaxon Thomas’s moments on this earth were short, my hope is that Footprints On My Heart will help memorialize him, making his legacy last a lifetime.. the lifetime that he wasn’t able to spend here on Earth.
