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Baby's Death Led Nurse To Begin Bereavement Program

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By YVETTE C. HAMMETT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 9, 2008

BRANDON - She had seen it so many times. Pregnant women coming to the delivery room with serious complications and leaving without their babies.

Families taking home only heartache.

This time, the baby was Adam Cardman Allred.

This time, the baby's death shook not only his family but a nurse who has seen death many times. Laurie Van Damme was shaken to her very soul.

"Something that day left me profoundly changed," said Van Damme, the single mother of a 13-year-old son, a woman who has worked on the labor and delivery floor at Brandon Regional Hospital for five years.

She held Adam after he died in the emergency room and rocked him when his parents couldn't yet respond, too overcome by the loss.

This time, she said, the frailty of human life tore at her.

"For two weeks, day and night, I cried. I thought if I was hurting so intensely, what must be the pain in that family."

"He was a perfectly healthy baby," Kristi Allred said. Then, at 4 a.m. in week 38 of her pregnancy, her uterus ruptured. Her husband, Scott Allred, drove her to the hospital.

"We still thought everything was going to be perfect," she said. But the baby couldn't be saved. And when reality set in, the Allreds were devastated beyond comprehension.

Their priest urged them to take photographs of the baby, and they did. But they never unwrapped him, and saw only his tiny face peeking out from a soft baby blanket.

As Van Damme worked to overcome her own grief over Adam's death, she went to her minister for support.

"There was a resounding need to have his brief life validated," she said.

"My pastor told me, 'You've cried your tears, now get up from this place and do something.' The desire was placed in me. It's the call of God in my life."

Two years after Adam's death, with the hospital's blessing, Van Damme started the Cherished Moments bereavement program for parents of babies that are stillborn or die soon after birth.

Today, she and other nurses photograph nearly every baby who dies before birth or within hours after. Many of the photographs are placed on CDs and set to music.

Cherished moments.

For the Allreds, the program inspired by their baby gives purpose to his life. "I never saw what his toes or fingers looked like," Allred said. "We have quite a few regrets."

Because of Van Damme's program, she said, other parents will have memories of their babies that she never will.

"It's that closure. You don't want to forget," Allred said. "You don't want other people to forget."

Reporter Yvette C. Hammett can be reached at (813) 657-4532 or yhammett@tampatrib.com.

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