Forever Remembered

One of our babies was being sustained on a ventilator in the small isolation nursery. We were awaiting the decision to turn off the ventilator. As it turned out, God made the final decision. It fell to me to carry out his after death care.

In those days families were not encouraged to see or hold babies after they had died. It wasn’t offered… and no one asked. The prevailing attitude was, ‘don’t see the baby, just go home… pretend it never happened… have another baby.’

As I carefully bathed his tiny lifeless body I thought about his very short life. He had returned to God without even knowing a loving touch. As I bathed him, alone in the isolation room, I quietly sang to him…. “Jesus loves me this I know…” I carefully dried his fragile skin, and wrapped him, not in a soft blanket, but in a white shroud… “little ones to him belong”

Covering him with soft blanket, I held him close, in my arms and carried him to the morgue. “…we are weak but He is strong” A few months later, a premature baby was stillborn. This mother asked to see her baby. The nurses refused. No one would take her baby to her. They didn’t think it was emotionally healthy.

I spoke up. “If she is asking to see the baby she probably needs to.”

The response came back, “If you think she needs to see her baby, then you take the baby to her.”

At 20 yrs old, I was the youngest, newest nurse on the unit. I took their challenge, because it was the right thing to do!

I wrapped the tiny baby girl in a blanket and carried her to her mother. We cried together as we studied her tiny fingers, her toes and her tiny face. The mother pronounced a name on her and thanked me for the only 30 minutes she would ever have to hold her baby.