Infants Remembered In Silence (IRIS) - Poems

Sweet Baby

Dear Sweet Baby, so perfect, so still.
The day you were born God cried for you as your parents did too.
Your journey into this world was never meant to be completed
- how painful for those who anticipated your arrival.
Your mother wept, your father wept, your aunts and uncles and grandparents wept,
even those who had not so looked forward to your arrival,
but helped you into this world wept.
I hold you in my arms so perfect, so beautiful.

Please…please baby wake up…your body is limp.
How my heart aches to see you this way.
Your skin is like ivory. Your mom holds you so close as she says goodbye…
she feels your cheek next to hers and lovingly kisses you,
then sadly turns her face as she hands you to me.
Your daddy gently takes you and rocks with his tears rolling down his face.
He is torn between saying goodbye to you and leaving his wife’s side,
who is crying and bleeding.

I feel only a part of their pain. I leave to weep silently and quickly.
I must be strong for them. As they begin a journey they never anticipated.
Your mom bleeds as her tears roll down her face.
I finally take you. I want to wake you.
You lay in my arms as though you are sleeping.
As I wrap you a final time,
I can’t help but to look at your perfect body and wonder “WHY?”
I know why though.
Not every baby is meant to have a journey in this world that we know.
You were not ready. You go on in a journey I can not imagine.
It hurt to finish wrapping you.

To leave you in blankets alone leaves your too vulnerable to
those who are curious to see “the baby”
so I must finish after the blankets.
I cannot take you downstairs – oh, my heat aches,
my eyes burn from trying to not cry and be strong.
Your mother still bleeds. I know why, she has lost the most important thing to her
-her baby.

Why should her body stop bleeding?
If she will slow down until she can see she must do as your dad is doing.

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