(This is a guest post from Jessica about her daughter Emily Neveah. Thank you for sharing this with us.)

My name is Jessica Cote and on March 24, 2009 my daughter Emily Neveah Cote was silently born an angel. I was eight and a half months pregnant when she passed away. The week before her demise I was in the hospital for puking up blood and they didn’t do a test to check if she was ok. No stress test or ultrasound, nothing. They told me her heart rate was 168 and I said that was too high for my baby. My medical record now says 148. Anyway, on March 22 it was a Saturday night and I had 5.5 hours of painful contractions. I called the doctor and told him I was in serious pain and contracting for over 5 hours. They told me to go home and put my feet up and I would be fine. I listened.

She died 24 hours later. Her umbilical cord was hyper-spiraled, so it suffocated her and cut off her oxygen and blood flow. When I went into the hospital and they told me she had died, in turn I died with her. A piece of me is gone that I can never get back. The loss of Emily has changed me forever. I have since decided that I am going to try to take the negative situation of her loss and turn it into something positive by starting a non-profit in her memory called S.T.A.R.S (Standing Together and Recognizing Stillbirth). The purpose of my non-profit is to donate a registered star in the sky along with funeral and headstone costs to families who suffer the loss of a stillborn baby. We are still in our infancy. I am registered with the state of New Hampshire and have an EIN with the IRS and we are currently working on getting our 501 (c)(3) status so we are recognized as an official non-profit.

I appreciate you taking the time to create a movie on this topic. This is a silent topic and no one ever wants to talk about it. What you are doing is amazing and I look forward to seeing this when it comes out.