The photographers capturing final moments: How baby loss charity supports grieving families

Volunteer photographers provide free remembrance images, helping bereaved parents preserve love, identity and connection after the loss of a baby

Katie Quilligan and her partner Shane Healy, with Baby Andrew at CUMH after he passed on February 24. Born prematurely, he lived for two hours and 58 minutes. Picture: Michelle McCormack/NILMDTS Ireland.

THERE is a reason why photographer Michelle McCormack hopes her phone doesn’t ring.

It is because it could mean a baby has just died.

But as a volunteer for the charity Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS Ireland), she also sees it as a chance for her to help grieving parents.

While she runs her own newborn photography business Little Milestones Photography, in Cork, she is on a nationwide roster of volunteer photographers who will, if requested, provide professional photography services to grieving parents. This can be anything from taking black and white photographs at the bedside in the hospital to enhancing old photos the parents themselves have taken of their babies when they died.

Awareness of NILMDTS’ Irish branch has grown steadily since it was officially launched in 2015. The charity offers what it describes as a free “gift of remembrance photograph”. to families who have experienced the loss of a baby around the time of birth.

While covid effectively put paid to the work of the charity due to the restrictions on who could visit, it has built itself back and, to date, it has helped more than 1,000 families.

Increasingly, HSE hospitals will provide contact details for NILMDTS Ireland when helping parents with access to various services for parents enduring the loss of their baby.

The charity originates from America, where it was set up by Cherly Haggard, whose son was born on February 4, 2005, with a condition that prevented him from breathing, swallowing, or moving on his own. He lived for six days, and her husband Mike arranged for professional photographer Sandy Puc’ to come and take photos of the couple cradling their son on his last day.

Those images now hang on the walls of their home alongside their other children.

The experience led Cheryl to form Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep with Sandy in 2005.

Volunteer photographer Michelle McCormack beside a photo a nurse took of her daughter Caoimhe before NILMDTS Ireland was established. Picture: Michelle McCormack/NILMDTS Ireland.

As well as being trained in how to deal with grieving families, many of the charity’s volunteers are also parents who experienced baby loss.

One of their new dispatchers, for example, is Lisa Duffy.

Herself and husband Mel’s baby boy Luke was stillborn at Portlaoise Hospital on October 29, 2018, and shortly after his inquest in 2022, she started advocating for Safer Births Ireland, which she co-founded.

After leaving the group last summer, she started volunteering as a dispatcher for NILMDTS Ireland. Lisa said: “Although I am not as much involved in advocacy work as I was, I try to find ways to help families like my own on the paths they take after baby loss.

“NILMDTS Ireland is such a wonderful charity that helps parents create something that celebrates the memory of their baby and helps them to cherish it.”

Board chairperson Anne Marie Gillooley, whose first son Max died on January 12, 2015, when she was 42 weeks pregnant, said: “Awareness of the charity is growing as people are becoming more comfortable with the idea.

“In a lot of cases, these parents have been planning christenings and other wonderful things for their baby and then the next, they suddenly planning a funeral.

“There is so much mental gymnastics going on.

“But when you are in that situation, your option is to have the fear of forgetting how beautiful and perfect your baby was or to have beautiful, gentle images of them.

“It’s a very different thing looking in from the outside than it is being in that situation and realising that with all the sadness and grief, you feel just overwhelming love as well.”

Katie Quilligan and partner Shane's baby Andrew at CUMH after he passed on February 24. Born prematurely, he lived for two hours and 58 minutes. Picture: Michelle McCormack/NILMDTS Ireland.

Like Lisa and Ann-Marie, Michelle knows about baby loss. She was just short of 38 weeks pregnant with her first child, Caoimhe, when she suddenly stopped kicking, and her GP confirmed he couldn’t find a heart beat.

She was sent to hospital, where they confirmed after a scan that Caoimhe had died and she was stillborn the following day, on February 10, 2007.

“Myself and my husband were absolutely devastated,” she recalled. “It was just a complete and utter shock to us.

“To this day, they have no idea what happened and even the results of Caoimhe’s post-mortem were inconclusive.

“The hospital had a proper bereavement service already set up and with the most wonderful bereavement midwives.

“They were amazing and while we were not offered the services of a professional photographer at the time, the nurses did take a few photographs for us.

“So, we had her little hand and footprint and three photographs, which now hang in frames alongside my other three children.

“Every year on her birthday, we’ll just do a little family day and we’ll go to the beach, or we might go for a meal or something and that’s our own little quiet way of celebrating her and remembering her.”

She added: “Once you have a baby, they are still your baby, and it’s your first time meeting them.

“They may have passed but you still look at them and think ‘oh, my God, they look like so and so’.

“I suppose with your hormones and everything, you’re still in a bubble of, ‘oh my God, I can’t believe I had this baby and look at her, she looks perfect’.

“In that moment, you’re trying to capture as much as you can, and you’re in a place of pure love and disbelief.

“It just seemed completely natural for me to take photos of her.

“I wanted to remember every moment I had with her and so when I see her photo, I remember the love and the grief.”

Katie Quilligan, with Baby Andrew at CUMH after he passed on February 24. Born prematurely, he lived for two hours and 58 minutes. Picture: Michelle McCormack/NILMDTS Ireland.

One of Michelle’s clients is Katie Quilligan, a 33-year-old mother of three.

She has suffered the loss of three newborn babies, James in 2020, Scarlett in 2024, and Andrew just four weeks ago.

“The charity wasn’t around when Scarlett was born but Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) nurses arranged for a photographer for me for James,” she recalled.

“I was all over the place for obvious reasons but I am so glad I had his photos done.”

Four weeks ago, she gave birth to twins at 26 weeks, again at CUMH, but sadly one of them — Andrew — died.

Speaking from the hospital, where his sister Alexis is being cared for in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, she said: “Because they did such a great job with James, I got them to photograph Andrew with Alexis, which is not just a memory for us but also for his sister when she grows up.

“I cannot recommend the service enough as I can now look back, when I see my babies’ photos and I can see them whenever I want.”

“Baby loss robs you of so many experiences you planned to have,” Ann Marie added.

She recently went to a hospital where she was due to take a photograph for the family of a baby who had just died.

As she entered the room, she noticed the baby’s mother doing her hair and putting some makeup on.

“It struck me that she was having that moment of being able to dress up and present herself as her baby’s mother,” she said.

“She wanted to have one of those many experiences that had been taken away from her with the loss of her baby.

“This is what we do for families.

“It is to help them celebrate the birth of their baby and to leave them with a memory they will cherish for the rest of their lives.”