Fleeting moments

Justin and Angela Escher began the year 2013 full of hope. In July, they expected the birth of their first child. But four months before her due date, Angela noticed the baby wasn’t kicking. They decided to go in for a checkup.

“We found out she had passed away,” Angela said. “On April 25, our daughter Leila was stillborn.”

Before Leila’s birth, the doctors asked if they wanted to take pictures with their baby. Angela felt unsure of the idea and talked it through with Justin and her extended family. Although still uncertain, they decided to do it.

“We would never get the opportunity again, and if we didn’t like them, we never had to look at them again,” she said.

On April 25, the Eschers met Michelle Warren, a photographer affiliated with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (NILMDTS), for the first time.

Warren runs her own photography business in Fargo, N.D., but she is also one of two area photographers who volunteer with NILMDTS, a nonprofit providing remembrance photography to families dealing with the loss of an infant.

Cheryl Haggard and Sandy Puc founded the organization in 2005 after Puc took pictures of Haggard’s son before he died. Named after the popular bedtime prayer, NILMDTS has nearly 2,000 volunteers across the United States and in seven other countries.

Warren quit her job as a mortgage lender in 2013 after learning about NILMDTS. Living in Minot, N.D., at the time, she discovered no one in her area was doing photography for the organization, so she filled out the application form and sent in samples of her work. The organization accepted Warren, and she became a full-time mom and photographer. “I feel like it’s what I’m meant to do,” she says.

In each case of infant death, the hospital makes the call, the photographer arrives and takes the pictures, and the family receives the pictures shortly after. But Warren—who has seen her share of births and grieving families—says she spends anywhere from half an hour to four hours with a family, depending on their emotional state.

Warren was eight months pregnant with her third child when she took her first NILMDTS call. She told the family she was pregnant before arriving at the hospital, but she was still nervous about seeing a deceased child for the first time. Once she began clicking the camera, everything changed for her.

“I tell people the images are the most beautiful and heartbreaking things you’ll probably ever see,” she said. “They’re looking at their baby and that’s a happy moment. … It’s just that their moment is short.”

The short moments often leave parents grieving over what they have or have not done with their babies. Warren recalled a mother who contacted her after receiving her CD of pictures. The mother had worried she never got to kiss her daughter, but Warren had taken a picture of her kissing the baby. She was very thankful.

“That’s why I do it,” she said. “I know that it helped her in some small way.”

The Eschers have mixed emotions about the pictures. On their wall they hung a large framed picture of Justin cradling Leila in his hands. They seldom look through the others. “It brings a lot of emotions back,” Ashley said.

Leila’s death left the Eschers, who are Lutheran, questioning their belief in God. It’s a journey they are still making. “You never think it’s going to happen to you and it does,” Ashley said. “I think even two years later, we’re still trying to figure out where we’re standing.”

Warren sees many families struggling to understand the why of such losses. Families may feel angry with God. But in many cases, Warren says, families turn back to their faith and cling to the hope that they will see their children again. In some instances, Warren has seen nonbelieving families turn to God after the loss.

Five months after Leila’s death, the Eschers found out they were pregnant again. Though it was a complicated pregnancy, Hudson was born on May 18 last year. And Warren took his baby photos.

“I get to celebrate with their next baby, so that’s rewarding too,” Warren said.

Wormholes on reality

Diplomats attending the UN’s 70th General Assembly in New York, which began in September, passed a makeshift glass structure. If they paused to go inside, they entered another world and found themselves face-to-face with Syrian refugees inside Zaatari camp in Jordan. Through an immersive video portal officials could gain real-time access to refugees, many of them children, and learn about their experiences in the camp and the war-torn country they left behind. In Zaatari, a camp with about 80,000 refugees, the portal resides inside a shipping container. It costs about $3,000 for internet access, electrical outlets, camera, computer, and projector, but it’s a relatively cheap way to put a human face on high-level deliberations. —Mindy Belz