Burial Dresses for Newborns Help to Ease the Sorrow : Louisiana: Volunteers create shroud-like gowns, using soft cloth, but dread the call for a new shipment.

BATON ROUGE, La. —  The notice in the church bulletin wasted no words, coming to the point with heartbreaking swiftness:

“Sewers needed to help put together baby dresses. These baby dresses are used for infants who die at Earl K. Long Hospital. The infants are presented to their parents and family to hold and say their goodbys. Obtain a dress kit with everything cut and ready to sew.”

And finally: “Bring only thread and your love.”

Now women like Cissy Davis patiently cut patterns of tiny, baby gowns from soft cloth, creating shrouds for dead infants. They bring them to the hospital a dozen at a time, always dreading the call for another shipment.

“You’re glad you can help, but you’re always sad when the nurses call and say they don’t have any more dresses,” Davis said.

But there seems to be an insatiable demand.

In 1990, Louisiana had the nation’s eighth-highest infant mortality rate--more than 11 babies lost for every 1,000 born. Nationally, 9 of every 1,000 died, giving the United States a higher rate than Singapore, Spain or Greece.

The problem, simply, is that too many babies are born too early, weighing too little. Too many women lack access to prenatal care or fail to take advantage of the care that is available.

Of the 2,600 deliveries at Earl K. Long in the last year, 20% of the mothers had no prenatal care. About 25 babies are brought each month to the hospital’s intensive-care nursery, most born not long after the pregnancy’s halfway mark. Many weigh just over a pound.

Ventilators gently force oxygen into underdeveloped lungs. Tubes the size of fishing line carry nourishment and medication into their bodies.

When death is imminent, nurses take the family into a nearby office to say goodby. Often, a mother will rock her baby until it dies.

Many of the families are poor. If the parents want a funeral, the nurses will work with a local church or service organization to raise the money. Or the nurses might encourage a funeral home to donate a casket, marker and a small plot of land at a cemetery.

There remains the problem of how to clothe these tiny corpses.

It’s nearly impossible to find clothes for babies born prematurely, many of them small enough to cradle in an adult palm, said Cindy Collins, a nurse who supervises the neonatal intensive-care unit.

So a year ago a pediatrician at the hospital called the First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge and asked if a woman’s group there would be interested in making infant burial gowns.

“What we asked them to do is to make some real little dresses that the parents could feel good about burying the babies in or keep as a memento,” Collins said.

Davis, Anna Miller and Pam Downing agreed to lead the project. They found a doll dress to use as a pattern. They purchased fabric and trimming, cut dress pieces from the cloth and placed the materials in plastic bags.

The announcement in the church bulletin drew immediate results. Some women asked for kits; others donated material and money.

“One lady didn’t have a sewing machine, but she wanted to make one so she sewed it by hand,” Davis said.

So far, the seamstresses have stitched almost 100 dresses. Whenever the hospital runs out, the women take a dozen to the nurses, and “that’s where it hits you,” Downing said. “It hits more going there than doing the sewing. The babies are so tiny.”

Davis, a mother of three grown children, wasn’t prepared for the emotional jolt. “The first little dress I made--it really bothered me to think I was making a dress for a baby who was going to be put in it that was dead.”

As she works, she remembers her own baby brother, born too early to survive. “My mother wouldn’t let me go to the funeral,” she said. “I often wonder, what did he wear when they buried him?”

She prefers to keep her distance from the beneficiaries of her work. She doesn’t meet the mothers she sews for and rarely inquires about the babies she sees in the nursery, clinging to life.

But she and all the other seamstresses know that their efforts are appreciated. Cindy Collins said many mothers bury their babies in these lovely dresses, but reserve the bonnets and blankets as keepsakes.

“They have a piece of something they can keep that says this baby was real,” Collins said.

“They’ve never gotten to take the babies home. A lot of times they’ve never gotten to feed them. Some family members think, ‘You couldn’t have gotten attached to them that fast because he or she was never a real person.’ But that’s not true.”