LaSaaun Lives Foundation
Who We Are
Born from love. Built through loss. Growing through purpose.
LaSaaun Lives Foundation was born from our family’s experience with love, pregnancy, stillbirth, grief, remembrance and healing.
What began as a way to honor our son, LaSaaun Jarell Tyiska Smith, has grown into a commitment to walk alongside families before, during and beyond birth.
This is more than our story. It is the reason we keep showing up.
Our Beginning
Before there was a foundation, there was a family waiting for a baby.
La’Zette and Nikia’s story began years before LaSaaun Lives.
They first knew one another as friends in high school, where they sang together in a traveling performance choir. Years later, life brought them back together. Their friendship grew into a relationship, and in July 2019 they were married.
They were excited to continue building their family. Nikia entered the marriage with twin sons, Dez and Demire, whom La’Zette had helped raise since they were young. Soon after the wedding, the family learned they were expecting another child.
A son.
LaSaaun.
Before We Ever Held Him, We Knew Him.
LaSaaun — 2020
One of the moments our family captured while waiting to welcome our son.
LaSaaun was not first known to our family through loss.
He was known through anticipation, movement, preparation and love.
For La’Zette, it would be his first experience preparing for the birth of his own child. He did what many new fathers do—asked questions, tried to make home comfortable, went to appointments, bought pregnancy pillows and support items, and tried to figure out how best to care for his wife and their growing baby.
Dez and Demire were preparing too. They had wanted another sibling and were already imagining the things they would teach their little brother and the life they would share with him.
The family photographed the pregnancy, watched Nikia’s belly grow and saved videos of LaSaaun moving—ordinary moments that would later become part of what La’Zette calls his “precious archives.”
We were ready for him.
Our home was filling with the things we expected LaSaaun would soon use.
By the spring of 2020, the world around them had changed. COVID-19 had altered everyday life and pregnancy care, but inside their home the family was still preparing to welcome LaSaaun.
The Night Everything Changed
At approximately 39 weeks, the bags were packed and the family was waiting for labor to begin.
When Nikia’s contractions intensified, she and La’Zette went to the hospital expecting what they had been preparing for all along: to meet their son.
After they arrived, members of the medical team tried to locate LaSaaun’s heartbeat. Then came the words no parent expects to hear.
They could not find it.
La’Zette remembers the room becoming dark beneath the weight of those words. Nikia began to cry. He had no words himself. All he could do was hold and console his wife.
Nikia still had to give birth.
On April 22, 2020, LaSaaun Jarell Tyiska Smith was born sleeping.
BORN SLEEPING — APRIL 22, 2020
A Moment of Human Connection
The medical team gave the family time with LaSaaun. They were able to hold him, photograph him and spend precious time together without being rushed.
One of the physicians caring for the family was Celeste Arden Swain, MD. It was also her first experience with a stillbirth delivery.
After LaSaaun was born, Dr. Swain asked Nikia a simple question: could she give her a hug?
Nikia said yes.
That embrace became a moment both women carried with them. Dr. Swain later reflected on the experience in a piece titled “The Hug.”
“Stillness. Silence. The heart. His heart. Still.”
Celeste Arden Swain, MD — “The Hug”
Leaving Without Him
Eventually, the family had to say goodbye.
La’Zette remembers walking down the hospital hallway and looking back toward the room where they had spent their final hours with LaSaaun.
They had gone to the hospital expecting to return home with their baby.
They left without him.
The ride home was quiet. But another painful responsibility was waiting.
Dez and Demire had gone to sleep expecting their parents to return with their little brother. Now La’Zette and Nikia had to tell them he was not coming home.
The family gathered together. There were tears, questions and silence. They looked through photographs of LaSaaun, held one another and began trying to understand something none of them had been prepared to experience.
Our Story, In Our Own Words
Our Story, In Our Own Words
We are preparing a short family story film sharing our experience, our journey through grief, and how LaSaaun’s life continues to shape the work we do today.
Family story film — coming soon
Told by La’Zette and Empress CB
When the film is ready it will live here, in their voices, without narration or explanation added on top of it.
From Grief to Purpose
What began in remembrance grew into service.
In the days and months that followed, there was no simple roadmap for grief.
La’Zette leaned into faith, family, music and moments of solitude. He began searching for information about stillbirth—trying to understand what had happened, what resources existed and where families like theirs could find support.
That search introduced the family to organizations, advocates, bereaved parents and fathers who understood a journey that had once felt isolating.
It also revealed something else: families needed more.
More information before birth.
More support for mothers.
More acknowledgement of fathers.
More space for siblings and families.
More compassionate care after loss.
More opportunities to remember babies by name.
And more help navigating what comes next.
La’Zette began sharing LaSaaun’s story and connecting with other families. Before there was even an organization called LaSaaun Lives Foundation, the family began serving.
One of their earliest efforts was a blanket and infant-gown drive for families experiencing pregnancy and infant loss. The idea was simple but deeply personal: give parents another option for dressing their baby and creating precious final photographs without having to immediately use the clothes they had expected their child to wear home.
That early act of care became part of something larger.
LaSaaun’s memory was becoming service.
We learned that support should not begin only after something goes wrong.
What began with pregnancy and infant loss support grew into a broader commitment to families.
LaSaaun Lives began moving upstream—supporting families during pregnancy, helping fathers understand how to participate and advocate, connecting families to resources, creating spaces for healing and remembrance, and bringing lived experience into conversations about maternal and infant health.
The work continues to grow because the lesson at its center has never changed:
Who We Are Today
A family-centered organization supporting families before, during, and beyond birth.
LaSaaun Lives Foundation is a San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) built by a family, for families. The work is carried by people who have lived it, and it is guided by what families say they need — not by what is easiest to deliver.
The Family Behind the Foundation
We did not enter this work from a distance.
LaSaaun Lives grew from the lived experience of a family learning how to carry love and grief at the same time.
The people behind the foundation are not separate from its mission. They are part of its beginning.
La’Zette Smith
LaSaaun’s Father
La’Zette transformed his search for understanding after LaSaaun’s death into advocacy, father engagement, education and family support.
His experience also changed how he understood fatherhood: fathers need information, acknowledgement and space to navigate their own emotions while supporting the people they love.
“He’s everywhere with me.”
“Your voice is still valid and you’re still loved.”
La’Zette Smith
Nikia Armstrong-Smith · Empress CB
LaSaaun’s Mother
Nikia’s journey as LaSaaun’s mother is woven throughout the foundation’s story—from pregnancy and loss to remembrance, family healing and the creation of spaces that honor babies and the families who carry them.
Her leadership in remembrance work reflects a belief that families deserve room to grieve, gather, heal and continue speaking their babies’ names.
LaSaaun Jarell Tyiska Smith
The Heart Behind the Legacy
LaSaaun’s life is the reason this work carries his name.
He remains a son, a brother and part of his family’s everyday life. His legacy continues through every family supported, every father acknowledged, every baby remembered and every effort to make pregnancy, birth, postpartum and loss support more compassionate.
What We Believe
What We Believe
- Fathers belong in the conversation.
- Mothers deserve to be heard, supported, and respected.
- Grief does not follow a timeline.
- A baby’s life is worthy of remembrance regardless of how long that life lasted.
- Families deserve support before crisis, not only after it.
- Healing can happen through community.
- Lived experience belongs at decision-making tables.
- Presence matters.
“I will never forget the way that hug made me feel connected…”
Celeste Arden Swain, MD — “The Hug”
Compassionate care can remain with a family long after a moment has passed.
Community Voice
Our Voice Extends Beyond Our Programs
Families are not only served by systems — they are shaped by them. We bring lived experience into the rooms where decisions about maternal and infant health get made.
Maternal & Infant Health · Father Inclusion · Stillbirth Prevention & Awareness · Advisory Work · Healthcare Collaboration · Community Conversations · Advocacy
Where We Are Going
The Legacy Is Still Growing
The work ahead is the work families keep asking for: to be reached earlier, included fully, and supported longer.
Stronger support for families · Father inclusion · Maternal and postpartum support · Pregnancy and infant loss support · Family wellness · Trusted community resources · Community collaboration · Advocacy and systems change
LaSaaun Lives continues to grow beyond the circumstances that created it. The future is about reaching families earlier, strengthening father inclusion, supporting mothers through pregnancy and postpartum, creating spaces for family wellness and healing, remembering babies gone too soon, connecting families with trusted resources and bringing lived experience into the systems that serve them.
Continue the Journey
Continue the Journey
However you arrived here, there is a next step that fits where you are.