Parents pause to remember lost infants

About 20 people gathered on the Capitol steps Wednesday evening to remember children who had died at birth or as infants.

Reno resident Pauline Jones lost her daughter Hope Elizabeth on Sept. 13, 2001, after doctors told her they wouldn't stop her labor because ultrasound scans showed the child had only three of four chambers in her heart.

She weighed 2 pounds and lived for an hour after birth.

"We had a chance to hold her and bathe her and sing to her before she died," Jones said Wednesday.

Jones, Sandy Lorenz and Stephanie Harris started the support group called Little Foot Prints to help parents who lose children to premature birth or miscarriage.

"There is nothing here and it is not talked about," Jones said of the need for the group.

Dayton resident Harris, whose daughter Christensa died after being born after only six months in the womb, observed Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day with her family.

Harris had already had an experience with a child born premature, when her son, Andrew, was born 14 weeks early.

When Christensa was born four years later, she was two weeks earlier than Andrew, Harris said.

Because of her and husband, Jason's, experience with Andrew, they asked that doctors not take extreme measures to keep the girl alive.

"She went into cardiac arrest two weeks after she was born," she said.

In order to deal with her grief at the loss of her daughter, she started talking to members of support groups.

"I wanted a way to deal with my grief, and I came across Robyn Bear and her Web site, Bearpainheartachhope.com."

The group's Web site is www.littlefootprints.org.