Helping the Heartbroken

Yesterday, I read this article covering of an organization dedicated to give comfort to mothers and families mourning the death of a newborn. It’s a remarkably moving story:

A white rose hanging outside the doorway tells nurses that the family in this one room of the maternity ward at Inova Alexandria Hospital is different. It puts them on notice not to tiptoe around the curtain smiling, ready to coo at a sleeping baby and congratulate the new parents. That’s because this couple is not experiencing the happiest day of their lives, but possibly the saddest: Their daughter, several months premature, was stillborn, one of the 25,000 stillborn each year in the United States.

Julia MacInnis, a forty-year-old Alexandria-based photographer, has walked into eighteen such hospital rooms during the past year. She is one of 5,500 volunteers for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a nonprofit organization that offers to send, at no charge, photographers to capture images of babies who have died or who are unlikely to live more than a few hours or days.

I’ve looked around the organization’s website , and the images they create for these families are incredibly poignant. I’m so amazed by the potent mix of thanksgiving and grief that these families express. Here’s one example:

At my five-month doctor’s visit, Brody and I both were on track for a great delivery. However, twelve days later, July 12, 2008, I woke up with contractions. Brody was born ten hours later, after the doctors did everything they could to stop my labor . . . . He lived for the best and worst thirty-five minutes of our lives while my husband and I sang to him and marveled over every detail of his perfectly formed body. We wanted a family so badly, and these pictures remind us, that though it was only for a half hour, we got to all be together. It was neither a dream nor a nightmare, but for real. Thank you, Vernon and NILMDTS, for helping us realize the beautiful when it’s too easy to remember the pain.