A gift of time, when a baby dies
Sometimes parents need to say hello before they can say goodbye.
When a baby dies at birth, parents are left with a longing, a relentless ache for more time. Time to make memories. Time to cuddle and bond. Time to get to know their baby. Time to say hello.
And then, eventually, when they’re ready, they need time to say goodbye.
But time is limited. And there comes a point when the baby needs to be taken to a cooler place, and placed in the morgue.
And yet, parents might not be ready to let go. Family might not have arrived. Goodbyes not said. Eleven years ago Tony and Carol Baldinelli had two very tiny identical twin boys, born 15 weeks too early. Daniel was the biggest, at 640 grams. And David, 480 grams.
Carol’s life was in danger due to HELLP syndrome, a condition that can occur later in pregnancy. Her blood pressure was high, and the decision was made to deliver her twin boys by caesarian section on Jan. 1, 2006. They were tiny and red, their skin thin and see-through.
A Polaroid photo was taken of each boy, before they were whisked away to the neonatal intensive care unit at McMaster University Medical Centre.
“The thing about life in the NICU,” says Carol, “is that nobody makes any promises.” David lived three days. When he died, the nurses bundled him up in a light blue blanket. Carol and Tony sat in a small room with a sofa, next to the NICU, and shared time with David. They rocked and cuddled him. A social worker came and took some photographs. “You might want them later on,” she told the couple.
And then, David was gone. Taken to the morgue.
Carol longed to bring him back to her room. “I just wanted to experience his whole being,” she says.
“I wanted to undress him and look at his entire body.
“I just wanted to experience more of him. I wanted to have more memories of him.
“I wish I could have looked at him and remembered his little body. I wanted to do all the tings that new mothers do with new babies.”
“We were mentally and emotionally exhausted.”
Says Tony: “You’re mourning what could have been. You never got a chance to know your son.”
Eleven years later, Carol still feels the bite of regret for not having spent enough time with her son.
And she wants other parents, who experience the death of a baby, to have the time she didn’t.
The Baldinellis have raised enough money to buy a CuddleCot, essentially a portable cooling mattress, for St. Catharines hospital. It’s available to parents as a way to keep a baby cooled, in order to spend enough time together. The mattress is placed inside a bassinet, and the baby on top of the mattress. When parents need to hold and touch the baby, they can.
“You can grieve in your own way,” says Tony, who works as senior manager of communications for Niagara Parks.
The $3,700 cost of the CuddleCot was raised through donations and family contributions after Carol’s father died last year. Harry Bongers was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December 2015 and died a month later, on Jan. 18, 2016, before chemotherapy was able to begin. He was 81.
Carol is a public health nurse with Niagara Region Public Health. She is part of the hospital’s bereavement team and heard about the CuddleCot as part of the group’s ongoing education.
She thought it would be a fitting way to honour both her son and her father.
Every parent’s needs are different, says Darcy Mueller, labour and delivery nurse. Some need to spend an hour with their baby, others a couple of days. And now, with the CuddleCot, and depending on the condition of the baby, that’s possible, says Mueller.
“They feel robbed of time,” says Mueller. “You plan for this little new one, and now you’re not going to have that time.
“They need time to say goodbye. They need time to make memories so they don’t forget this little one.”
When a baby dies, parents are offered a memory box filled with items including hand and footprints, photographs, a lock of hair and a bracelet that spells their baby’s name in beads.
“We try to give them something to hold on to,” says Mueller.
Once again, from April 5 to 7, they will hold a penny sale in the hospital’s cafeteria to raise funds for bereavement supplies.
Daniel, David’s twin brother, spent more than his first four months of life in the hospital before coming home. He fought for life many times during those days. He endured multiple infections. Surgery to close a valve in his heart. Steroids to get off the ventilator. And trouble gaining weight.
The Baldinellis talk openly about David.
Every night, Daniel prays for his twin brother. “Thank you, God, and thank you, David,” he will begin, before finding something to be thankful for that day.
Carol is thankful to make a difference in the lives of grieving parents.
“If I can take my grief and help someone else,” she says, “that would be a great thing.”