Littleton – Cheryl Haggard went into the hospital in February planning to leave with her fourth child. Instead, she left six days later with a bag full of books on grieving.
“How can you leave with just a bag?” Haggard said. “I was devastated.”
But Haggard left with something more.
After taking little Maddux off life support Feb. 10, Haggard and her husband, Mike, sat for an emotional photo session with their son, free of the wires that kept him alive.
The resulting black-and-white portraits and DVD, which plays images of Maddux and his parents set to music by Kenny Loggins, are how Haggard remembers the boy she lost and how she introduces him to others.
“I love to show him to people,” Haggard said, holding the portable DVD player she carries everywhere. “I can say: ‘This is Maddux. This is who he was. This is what he looked like.”‘
Now the Evergreen woman and Littleton-based professional photographer Sandy Puc’, a mother of four, have created a nonprofit to help mothers remember their children with photographs and a DVD.
Haggard said the photos, while difficult, have helped her heal.
“Until you’ve walked in my shoes, you will never know my grief,” she said. “I think a lot of people could benefit. People don’t like to talk about it. Grief is such a taboo subject.”
Haggard’s grief is still fresh. Maddux Achilles Haggard was born Feb. 4 at Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center. He weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces. He looked like his sister. His middle name was picked out by his brother after he saw the movie “Troy.”
But it was immediately clear that something was wrong.
Haggard saw him briefly and kissed him on the forehead before Maddux was whisked to neonatal intensive care.
After days of tests, doctors determined that Maddux had several problems, including an underdeveloped cerebellum. He couldn’t breathe. Before the Haggards took Maddux off life support, their other children, ages 11, 8 and 5, met him for an hour.
The Haggards had seen photos by Puc’ hanging at the hospital. They called, and she agreed to come immediately. What took place was an emotionally exhausting photo shoot at the hospital with the lifeless boy, freed from machines for the first time.
“We knew we had done something so different, so life-changing,” Puc’ said.
Haggard said she struggled leaving Maddux’s body behind at the hospital. But getting the photos and seeing the DVD helped her family.
She had to make her own birth announcements, because none that were commercially available allowed for explanation of the child’s death, she said.
Haggard donated Maddux’s clothes, formula and diapers to a friend helping an orphanage in Mexico. But she wanted to do something more.
As she and Puc’ talked, the answer became clear. They took a line from a bedtime prayer and turned it into a new volunteer organization.
The all-volunteer organization, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, plans to give mothers in situations like Haggard’s a photo session, an 8-by-10-inch portrait and a DVD for free. Haggard and Puc’ hope to enlist photographers to help and to get hospitals to inform parents about the option. They also plan to form a support group for families.
Its website – www.nowilay medowntosleep.org – went up last month.
Haggard’s OB/GYN, Dr. Valerie Ginsburg, said studies have shown that parents who have contact with the baby they lost cope better than those who have none. She witnessed firsthand how the DVD helped Haggard, and supports her plan.
“It’s very moving. It definitely touches your heart. You can tell just how much thought and caring went into it,” Ginsburg said. “I think it should be offered to everybody.”
Haggard and Puc’ now hope to offer just that for people in the Denver area.
“I think,” Haggard said, “that there is a reason for everything that happens.”
Staff writer Sean Kelly can be reached at 303-820-1858 or skelly@denverpost.com.
