With our car loaded with blankets, booties and onezies, we pulled into the hospital parking lot in Cuilapa. At one end of the low cement building, I noticed a single word written in peeling red paint, "Morgue." I was relieved that we entered the other end of the building.
When our friend, Ellen Clayson, first asked Jay and me to accompany her and her husband, Jeff, to deliver newborn kits, the activity seemed like a fun diversion. I imagined handing carefully packed kits to proudly beaming mothers in clean beds. I liked the idea of sweet babies going to their homes in cute color-coordinated outfits. I had heard stories of babies going home wrapped only in newspapers; but the babies of Cuilapa would not do that today.
Even before we entered the hospital, however, we were met by a volunteer who informed us that fourteen women would not have babies with them. Some of these women had developed life-threatening infections after taking their newborns home. The rest of the childless women were mothers of babies who had died. I thought of how our friends, Mary Lou and Dee Whittier, had bought lambing lights to give to another hospital so that newborns there would not die of hypothermia. With no money for fancy incubators, Elder Whittier, a veterinarian, remembered that heat lamps keep baby lambs alive. For twenty dollars per lamp, Elder and Sister Whittier had saved lives. I wondered if a twenty-dollar lambing lamp could have saved any of the babies in Cuilapa.
Sister Clayson's thoughts seemed more about the task at hand. She assured the volunteer that we had brought enough other appropriate packets to give to the grieving mothers.
In the first room we entered, three childless women lay in their beds, sobbing quietly. One woman asked us to pray with her. The other two soon made the same request. We all bowed our heads and closed our eyes as three prayers were said in Spanish.
In a much larger room, we saw rows of beds with tattered stained sheets or no sheets at all. In most of the beds, mothers lay cuddling or nursing their babies. Occasionally, a bed held only a mother; no baby. In this hospital there is no nursery. The maternity ward consists of a large Pepto-Bismol pink room with chipped floors and cracked walls. Other than Jay and Elder Clayson, the only men in this room were doctors or medical students. Upon entering, I followed Sister Clayson's lead and busily passed out zip-lock baggies containing a blanket and clothing set for each child--pink or purple for hijas, blue or green for hijos. Gifts of toiletries and a candle were for those women without children.
In a far corner, one young woman cried uncontrollably. Jay said a prayer with her, but she was not consolable. Her baby had just died that morning. She cried so hard she could barely breathe.
I ached for her. I felt helpless and unable to communicate the feelings of my heart. Then, a thought came to me. "Tell her that her baby is in heaven," I whispered to Jay.
He relayed the message in Spanish.
Then I whispered other things. "Tell her that her child is sweet and innocent and has never done anything wrong. God knows her child is sinless because her child has never sinned. Her baby is now in heaven with God, a Heavenly Father who loves that child very much."
The woman stopped crying and looked into Jay's eyes.
"Tell her that she will see her child again in the next life," I whispered.
When Jay told her this, a faint peaceful smile came to her face.
Later that morning as we were leaving, I said to Sister Clayson, "Look at that woman in the corner who is smiling. She was crying earlier today because she lost her baby only a few hours ago.
Sister Clayson was amazed that this young mother could smile.
The message that Jay delivered was far more important to her than any bag of toiletries. I think that this dear grieving woman may have been desperately afraid of where her unbaptized child's spirit would go. I also believe that when she heard of God's eternal plan of happiness, the Holy Ghost bore witness to her of its truthfulness. The Holy Ghost comforted this young mother in her time of deep sorrow.
