"To honour the memory of our son who was born sleeping."

Team Noah will be running to honour the memory of our son, Noah Tevita Tai-Roche born still, on the 22nd September 2014.

Noah was born still after a normal and otherwise ‘textbook’ pregnancy. I carried our beautiful boy to 41 weeks gestation. Besides some morning sickness in the first trimester, I felt great throughout the pregnancy, and all routine tests and ultrasounds were normal.

It was a Sunday morning, we were seven days overdue and I felt strange when I woke up. I thought perhaps I would go into labour that day but was concerned as I hadn’t felt Noah move since waking. I had a cold drink, a hot drink, something to eat, and even bounced on my swiss ball, in an attempt to get him moving. But he still didn’t move. I phoned my midwife and went to the hospital to have his heartbeat checked… and it was as sudden as that… he was gone.

An enormous haze of emotions enveloped my husband and I as we needed to make decisions that no parent should ever have to make in their lifetime.

I decided to be induced, and gave birth to our beautiful little boy at 10:52 am on the 22nd September 2014. It was the most incredibly wonderful but most suffocating moment of our lives. There are really no words to describe it.

We still have no clear reason why our little boys’ heart stopped that day, something I struggle with enormously. This is why, Brendan and I have decided to support organisations such as the Stillbirth Foundation to ensure that vital research into early detection and prevention of stillbirth continues.

Noah is 1 of 6 Australian babies born still every day in this country.

In Australia, 1 out of 135 births will be a stillbirth.

In approximately 40% of cases the cause of the baby’s death is not known.

This journey is incredibly hard, one I wish my family and I were not on. However, despite not having my son in my arms on this Earth every day, my job as Noah's mother remains... my job is to raise awareness and assist prevention, break the silence of stillbirth and hold space for other parents like us, who lose our precious children much before their time.

Brendan and I saw the Stillbirth Foundation City 2 Surf post several months after we lost Noah. It said that they would soon be ready to recruit a Stillbirth Fundraising team for the City to Surf, Sydney 2015. Brendan and I decided on the spot that we would do the race, and wondered if any of our family and friends would be interested also. I reposted the excerpt to my Facebook wall, and said that Brendan and I were thinking of putting a little Team Noah together if anyone was interested. We were so overwhelmed with the response. I think many people don’t know what to do when you lose your child, and perhaps they thought this an incredible way to show us their support and love and to raise much needed funds for an incredibly important cause. To date, we have 64 Team Noah runners in this year’s City 2 Surf Sydney, and we are incredibly humbled and thankful of their support and fundraising efforts to help prevent stillbirth and support the Stillbirth Foundation Australia.

For more information on Stillbirth or to donate, please visit: www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au

The Stillbirth Foundation Australia is the first and only organisation in Australia dedicated to the sole understanding of stillbirth. The Stillbirth Foundation’s mission is to reduce the incidence of stillbirth through research, education and advocacy. To date the foundation has granted in excess of $1 million dollars to leading researchers working to overcome the tragedy of stillbirth.