HENRY COUNTY, Ga. (WALB) — About 21,000 babies are stillborn every year in the U.S. — about 1 in 175 births, according to the Center for Disease Control.

For Laken Dean, that number has a name, Grayson Stone Dean.

In 2022, Dean arrived at Piedmont Henry Hospital to learn there was no heartbeat. Her first child, Grayson, was stillborn. A nurse told her she could have a cooling cradle in her room, but it was a mistake. The nurse had confused Piedmont Henry with another hospital. There was no cradle.

“We still were able to spend a little bit of time with him, just not as much. And it meant the world to us,” Dean said. “Sometimes I look back and I’m like, we could have had more if we had that device. And that’s why it’s so important to us.”

Weeks after leaving the hospital, Dean and her husband created Grayson’s Footprints Foundation — with a mission to provide stillbirth awareness, education and resources, donate cooling cradles to hospitals, assist families with infant burial and cremation expenses, and more.

The first fundraiser bought a cooling cradle for Piedmont Henry. Nurses confirmed it was used more than 100 times in less than a year.

Since then:

• 2022: Piedmont Henry Hospital
• 2023: Piedmont Fayette Hospital
• 2024: Wellstar Douglas
• 2025: Piedmont Cartersville
• 2026: In progress — $1,229 raised of $4,295 goal.

The cooling cradle is a small bassinet with a cooling pad that preserves the baby, giving families hours, even days, more time to hold them, take photos, get handprints and footprints, and say goodbye slowly.

Those cradles can be used not only for stillbirth, but for early miscarriage and infant death in the NICU, Dean said.

Beyond cradles, the foundation has helped place specialized training in hospitals so nurses are educated on how to care for families experiencing infant loss, connected families with remembrance photography, advocated to ACOG to measure the placenta, joined The Big Push 2022 Empty Stroller Walk in Washington D.C. to end preventable stillbirth, and sent Mother’s Day cards to loss moms.

“Whenever we lose somebody, we never want to stop saying their names,” Dean said. “It’s still important to these families to hear their baby’s name, to know that their life mattered, that people still think about them.”

Every October for Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, the foundation hosts its pinwheel project — loss families make a small donation in memory of their baby and submit their name for a large display.

Dean and her husband welcomed their rainbow baby girl in June 2024 and another baby girl in August. She is now writing a book to help young siblings understand stillbirth loss in an age-appropriate way.

You can learn more about the foundation, family stories , education and resources on its Instagram page @GraysonsFootprintsFoundation. The current cradle fundraiser is on GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/38016e5b2

“Connect with other families because that’s been the biggest blessing for me,” Dean said. “I’m able to meet other people and it’s a really big community out there that not many people know about.”

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