Photos help heal broken hearts
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
By Kay Luna | Monday, March 31, 2008 |
Chiara and James Hemsley of Iowa City laugh with their 9-month-old daughter, Norah Claire, who can’t crawl but tries to walk. The couple has an album of photos and a pair of framed enlargements of their first child, Samuel, who was stillborn. Buy this Photo
VIDEO: Stillborn Photography
A Quad-City photographer takes pictures of stillborn infants for families a…
Watch Video
She tries to keep smiling, talking about the one day — the single, precious, all-too-short day — they spent holding their little Samuel.
He stopped moving in her womb one day before he was born full-term.
But Chiara Hemsley never wanted to let go. She still doesn’t.
She glances down at the photos spread across her coffee table.
They show her and her husband, James, cradling their dark-haired son — bundled up in baby blankets — in their Iowa City hospital room. A few even focus on his tiny fingers, curled around their own.
Those images, gifted to them by Moline photographer Lisa Francescon, and their memories are all the Hemsleys have left of Samuel, who was stillborn May 26, 2006.
Diagnosed with a chromosome defect at 20 weeks of gestation, Samuel would not survive; his parents knew that. But it didn’t make losing him any easier.
Just looking at the photos seems to bring a rush of emotions to the
surface.
“I’m trying not to cry,” Hemsley says, turning to look at her husband with tearful eyes.
“We just wanted to remember the moment,” he said, comforting his wife with a smile. “When we decided to keep the pregnancy going, we decided that was the time we had with him. We named him Samuel right away. We talked to him in the womb.”
“We just wanted to remember him,” he added. “It was really important that we never forget we had a son.”
Proof of a life
It was the first time the Hemsleys’ photographer, who runs Captured Moments Photography out of her Moline home, had done anything of the sort.
Francescon mostly takes photos of happy children and families, usually posing them outdoors or in their home environment. Taking photos of a baby who had died, and doing so in an Iowa City hospital room, was very different — and emotional, she said.
She herself was six months pregnant with her second child, a
daughter who is now 1½ years old, when Chiara Hemsley called, three weeks before Samuel was born.
Hemsley had found Francescon through a Web site for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, an international network of photographers who take heirloom photos and make DVDs, free of charge, for grieving parents of infants who have died or of children in hospice care.
At the time, Francescon — married and also the mother of a 4-year-old daughter — had only recently joined the group. Now, she is the Quad-City regional coordinator for the organization, named after the famous children’s bedtime prayer. She got involved after reading about the service in an online photographers’ forum.
“I just felt a calling,” she said. “I thought, ‘I can do this.’ After carrying a baby for nine months and having it be a part of you, to not have any record of that is just a shame.”
The organization was founded in Denver by photographer Sandy Puc’ and one of her clients, Cheryl Haggard, a mother of four who lost her 6-day-old son, Maddux, on Feb. 10, 2005. Knowing she and her husband would want to remember Maddux in photographs, she called Puc’ after seeing her portraits of infants displayed at the hospital where their baby was born.
Puc’ and her staff gently accommodated the Haggards’ request that photos be taken both before and after Maddux’s respirator was removed. The photos and a DVD set to music, which can be viewed on the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Web site (nowilaymedowntosleep.org), were a tremendous comfort, Haggard said.
“When a family loses a baby, their bodies and their minds are in shock,” Puc’ states in a news release about the organization. “They can barely remember the experience. But with these photos, they can go back and really look at their babies — their faces, their hands, their toes. … It takes away some of the pain.”
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep posts an online list of 3,200 volunteer photographers from 12 countries worldwide who are willing to go to any hospital in their general vicinity and provide their services for free. It also screens applicants and offers training before approving membership in the organization.
‘I cried all the way’
Francescon, one of only a few Quad-City area photographers registered on the Web site, was worried about what the Hemsleys’ reaction would be when she finally met them.
She had carefully let them know she was six months pregnant with her second daughter — and very much showing that — when Chiara Hemsley called from Iowa City, asking whether she would be willing to take photos for them.
They didn’t mind that she was pregnant. They just wanted her help.
The grieving parents did not know how long Samuel would live, but they hoped he would be born alive. That was not to be the case.
As soon as the infant arrived, Francescon was notified. She braced herself for what she would see, grabbing her equipment and jumping in the car. She thought about the Hemsleys all the way there.
“My husband brought me to Iowa City, and I cried all the way,” she said. “I still think about that little baby.
“Once I walked into the room, it was all about the family and not about me. I take photos, just like I do in my regular newborn photography sessions. I do hands and feet and toes and face.”
The experience helped her cope with some subsequent photo sessions, including one for a Quad-City family who lost their newborn son in December.
Francescon said she counts on word-of-mouth to let people know about the service and also has created a DVD about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep that is given to area hospitals, doctors, nurses and midwives. An Iowa City hospice also has been referring families to her, including one whose 2-year-old daughter was suffering from a congenital heart defect.
She went to take photos of the toddler and her parents in the fall. The girl died soon thereafter, Francescon added.
Amy Polowy, a registered nurse at Trinity’s 7th Street BirthPlace in Moline, said she is pleased to have needed to refer only one family to Francescon since discovering Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep online about eight months ago.
As her department’s perinatal hospice coordinator, Polowy researches the topic and attends conferences on how to deal with grief and help parents coping with the loss of their child. She now has Francescon’s DVD to share with families, letting them know about the service in a “very sensitive” manner, Polowy added.
“This is something they can really remember the baby by,” she said of the photos. “When they leave the hospital, they’re going to have a tangible memory that their baby was really there.”
Staffers at Genesis Medical Center’s BirthCenter in Davenport said they also seek to comfort grieving families, offering them special memory boxes, knitted caps and disposable cameras to collect reminders of their babies.
A nurse who oversees the department’s bereavement program also takes photos of the babies and makes collages for the families, but nurse manager Deb Renner said she did not know Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep has area photographers willing to do that kind of work. She plans to ask her staff to contact Francescon soon.
“We see problems like this happen two to five times a month,” Renner said, referring to infant deaths. “Anything you can do that keeps those memories alive for them is so special.”
‘A healing sort
of moment’
If he had lived, Samuel Hemsley would have turned 2 in May.
But he got the chance to live only a short time, and not in this world, his mother said.
He was born about 6:30 a.m. that day. Hospital staff wrapped him up, and his parents spent most of the day alone with him, holding, talking and singing to him.
Francescon arrived about 4 or 5 p.m. that day, and “she was respectful, very professional and peaceful,” Chiara Hemsley said.
Soon after the photos were taken, the couple said goodbye to Samuel. It was a profoundly sad time.
“But it was kind of a healing sort of moment to receive those photos,” she said. “They’re really serene.”
Two years later, his mother, a 30-year-old biology instructor at the University of Iowa, and father, a 29-year-old marketing official with ACT in Iowa City, still think about Samuel.
They keep photos of him on display in their bedroom.
But they have found new joy, too, in their smiley 9-month-old daughter, Norah Claire.
One recent day, the little blonde with big blue eyes giggled and wobbled around, balancing precariously against the family’s coffee table.
Norah opened her mouth wide, laughing and clapping to “Pat-A-Cake” before grabbing one of her brother’s photos with a chubby hand.
Her parents say she resembles what they imagine Samuel would look like today, if he had lived.
Their family story always will include the boy they still cherish — if only in photos.
GROUP PROVIDES DVD
“If I could have a lifetime wish, a dream that would come true, I’d pray to God with all my heart for yesterday and you.
“A thousand words can’t bring you back; I know, because I’ve tried. And neither will a million tears; I know, because I’ve cried.
“You left behind a broken heart and happy memories, too. But I never wanted memories. I only wanted you.”
This poem was included in a DVD containing photos taken for a grieving family, who posted comments about the process at nowilaymedowntosleep.org.
Volunteer photographers affiliated with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, which provides a list of such professionals online, will visit interested families at any hospital in the photographer’s general vicinity to take keepsake photos of babies who die before or soon after birth.
The photographers provide a printable CD file of the images, plus a DVD set to music, free of charge.
For more information, go online to nowilaymedowntosleep.org or call Lisa Francescon, a Moline photographer who is the regional coordinator for the group, at (309) 269-5013.
Tax-deductible donations can be sent to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, 7800 S. Elati St., No. 111, Littleton, CO 80120.
Read personal stories of those touched by Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep on the group’s online forums at nowisleep.com.
— Kay Luna
IF YOU GO
Those who are coping with the loss of a child before or soon after childbirth are invited to Butterfly Blessings, an annual memorial event that honors grieving family members and their babies.
The event will be 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 12, in the Jardine Center at Trinity Medical Center-West Campus, Rock Island.
For more information or to register to attend, contact Trinity’s
pastoral care department at (309) 779-2989. Reservations are encouraged.
Kay Luna can be contacted at
(563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com.
Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
reddit» More Local Stories
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
- Technology News Articles
- Computers, MP3, Phones & More. See Product Pics, Specs & Reviews.
- www.NexTag.com
- 2008 Diet Of The Year:
- Finally, A Diet That Really Works! Seen On CNN, NBC, CBS & Fox News.
- www.Wu-YiSource.com
- Cheap Airfare
- Compare multiple travel sites. Discount web fares made easy.
- www.LowFares.com
- Ads by Yahoo!
