Giving comfort when a baby dies

BARSTOW • At less than half an inch long, the footprint on the other side of Judy Fox’s badge looked fake, but it wasn’t.

“There’s a lot of babies that don’t make it to term for some reason, and I can get their little footprints,” Fox said.

The footprint on her badge had come from a baby who had been in the womb for 10 weeks. “If they lose one under 20 weeks that may be the only thing the mom has of that pregnancy,” she said.

When a mother loses her baby, no matter how developed it is, Fox and the other nurses at Barstow Community Hospital’s maternity ward, will put together a grieving box. Fox and her colleague Lauren Stapp will pick out a box, include a baby book, a teddy bear, baby clothes, and, if they can, the baby’s footprint and a lock of its hair for the mother and family to take home with them.

Most hospitals have resources available if a mother has lost her baby, according to Stapp, who began putting together the grieving boxes about 10 years ago. But, she said, she, Fox and the other nurses add a personal touch by giving the mother something they can touch.

“It’s just a ministry,” she said. “It’s such a sad time. Anything we can do to help with the grieving process.”

If a baby has died at the hospital, the nurses treat the child as if it were alive. They’ll wash the body and dress it in hand-made baby clothes. If they can, they’ll get casts of its feet, and often the nurses will baptize the babies. The nurses will then swaddle the baby and bring it back to the mother.

“I lost a child,” said Sally Obando, another nurse at the hospital, who said that her son was six months old when he died. “These are the things I would want to have.”

 Stapp and Fox have put together grieving boxes for their patients and their families for about 10 years. Obando has worked at the hospital for about four years. Often the nurses will attend memorial services for the babies that have died, Fox said. The nurses in the maternity ward will also sign the couple’s baby book, Stapp said.

“It’s not like they’re going to forget us or we’re going to forget them,” she said, adding that the maternity ward plans to hold a memorial next year for the mothers of babies that have died. “The memorial service is about not forgetting what happened. Life, as short as it was, is valuable.”

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com