How Hospitals Handle Early Infant Death

A recent article from my local newspaper, the Reading Eagle (PA), discusses how two area hospitals help families whose babies die at birth. One hospital hangs a yellow rose on the mother's door, so all hospital staff know the family has lost a baby. They allow parents to spend as much time as they want with their child.

Berks County’s two hospitals — Reading Hospital and St. Joseph Medical Center — have support systems in place that help families cope with infant death.

As part of that effort, hospital staff puts together memorial boxes for families. Those boxes include photographs, locks of hair, knitted clothing and small shells used to baptize the babies.

"We want to create as many memories as we can," said Lori Meredith, a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Reading Hospital. "It is a lot of memories to create in a short amount of time."