Parents Who Lose Babies Find Healing At Brandon Hospital

BRANDON - Donna and Eddie Barker already had two boys when they learned a third baby was on the way.

Life was good. Preparations were under way.

Months later, grief overtook them in an instant. Donna no longer could feel the baby moving. Its heartbeat had faded away.

Eddie Barker raced to the hospital to join his wife.

Their new baby's life had ended abruptly at 33 weeks, sending the Valrico couple into an emotional tailspin. As they struggled to grasp the reality of their loss, nurses on the labor and delivery floor at Brandon Regional Hospital approached the couple, offering to photograph them with the baby.

Eddie Barker, in deep despair, thought for a moment it must be a twisted joke. "I thought, 'Who wants to hold their dead baby?' You're totally inconsolable, blindsided. At that moment, you're not thinking rationally."

The nurses persisted. And the couple later would find consolation in their decision to hold baby Brandon. To touch his hair. To see the shape of his lips, the curve of his tiny nose. To view the only photographs they have of their third child.

Their older boys, Steven, 12, and Eric, 7, also treasure the photographs. Baby Evan, now 5 months old, will know his older brother, if only through those pictures and his parents' memories.

"Grief is a process of remembering rather than forgetting," said Laurie Van Damme, a clinical nurse coordinator in labor and delivery at Brandon Regional. In the past 17 months, she and other nurses she has trained have created special memories for more than 40 families whose babies were stillborn or died shortly after birth.

"All this love exists for these parents, but they have no place to attach it," Van Damme said, explaining why she started the nation's first hospital-based memorial video program for families such as the Barkers.

In the past five years, hospitals have changed their perspectives about how to help parents cope with the death of their babies, Van Damme said.

"There's always been a struggle about how to handle it," she said. "These days, more hospitals are encouraging people to spend time with their babies and to get photographs. Where most places still fall short is in bereavement photography. Two Polaroids is not what they need."

Van Damme will speak to the Association of Women's Health, Obstetrics and Neonatal Nurses about Brandon's bereavement program this month in Las Vegas. "They're the standard setters for what goes on in the hospitals," she said.

She and other nurses photograph the babies with their families or separately, then create DVDs showing the photographs and set them to music. They also give parents a cloth-covered box filled with mementos - the baby's blanket, the outfit, booties and knit cap the baby wore for the photos and ink prints of the baby's tiny hands and feet.

These will be the parents' only tangible keepsakes.

Jessica and Adam Zayas of Brandon hold on tight to the few memories they have.

"Everything is like a clouded haze," said Jessica Zayas, 23. The couple lost their baby, Mialysa, in 2007 at 36 weeks.

Moments after going to the doctor and learning there was no heartbeat, Jessica frantically called her husband, who drove her to the hospital. "They induced labor. It still hadn't hit me."

The video helped later.

"She did exist," she said of Mia. "A lot of people compared it to a miscarriage. When I watched [the video], you realize she was there and she was a little baby."

About 60 babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth at Brandon Regional every year. Nurses move the mothers to one end of the ward and post a symbol of loss on the hospital room door - a green leaf cradling a single tear drop - so no one will ask the wrong questions.

The nurses waste little time making the offer.

The Cherished Moments bereavement program enables families to create memories before time runs out, Van Damme said.

"We have found, over the past few months, that there is no difference in [a parent's] love for a baby that is 18 weeks or 30 weeks," she said.

The program still helps Zayas celebrate her daughter's brief life.

"They let me have [Mia] after they cleaned her up," she recalled. In the early months, she was unable to look at the photos. Later, though, it became difficult to recall the fleeting details. She sought ways to heal.

"I couldn't remember what her feet looked like," Zayas said. The mementos and photos, she said, enable her to look back on the experience and know Mia was real.

Van Damme has converted a utility room on the labor and delivery floor into closet space. Volunteers donate hand-knitted booties and caps that are stored there. The hospital pays for outfits and cloth-covered boxes to put them in. Van Damme also had software created that makes producing the DVDs an easy step-by-step process.

Zayas picked the outfit Mia wore in her only photos. Today, it sits in the crib still set up in a nursery filled with a sprinkling of cherished keepsakes. The video is among them.

When parents don't participate, the nurses photograph their babies alone, as if they are sleeping, and produce DVDs -- just in case.

Almost always, Van Damme said, the phone rings. A parent or grandparent calls the hospital within the first two months, desperately seeking something to hold on to as they grieve the baby's death.

And Van Damme and other nurses at Brandon Regional frequently get calls, notes and letters expressing gratitude.

The first call came from a grandmother. "She was so grateful," Van Damme recalled. "It served as confirmation that this was a needed thing. This is the only moment they have with that baby."

For the Barkers and many like them, Van Damme's program has made a world of difference. The couple lost their baby in January 2007.

"What little time we had with him was so special," Donna Barker said. "The box really does help with the grieving process. It's nice to have his blanket, to hold it, to smell it. Every time I see the video or the pictures, it makes me sad, but it was really very nice to have."

Only in recent weeks have the Barkers seen the video. In it, each parent is holding their son.

"I didn't really want to hold the baby," Donna Barker said. "I was very, very distraught and in a tailspin. Eventually I did, and I was glad that I did."

LEARN MORE

Van Damme received the Dr. Frist Humanitarian Award from HCA Inc., Brandon Regional's parent company, in April for her work creating the bereavement initiative and a training program for other hospital employees. You can view the presentation of the award here. The corporation presents the award to people who demonstrate extraordinary concern for the welfare and happiness of patients and their community.