Zachary and Maia
Feb. 15, 2006 — -- Leaving the hospital recently, Kristen and Larry Kahn seemed happy as they pushed a doubles stroller that carried their twin sons, Zachary and Jason.
The Kahns may look like any other proud new parents, but what they've been through in the past year is more than most parents can imagine.
For 10 days in January and February, the "Nightline" team spent 24 hours a day inside the neonatal intensive care unit -- the NICU -- at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian in New York. "Nightline" documented the emotional trauma of families whose smallest members hover between life and death in their first weeks of life, and the decisions doctors and nurses must make every day in an effort to save them.
The Kahns, who conceived through a fertility treatment, have been through the NICU experience twice. About a year ago, Kristen delivered her baby boy, Jacob, prematurely. He died five days later.
"He was just barely a pound," said Larry.
To help parents cope with the death of a baby, the nursing staff fills a satin-lined "memory box" with mementos of the baby; the box might include the child's handprints and footprints, birth certificate, clothes and photos.
"In high school, you would get the essay question all the time of, if your house was burning and you could rescue only one thing from your house ..." Larry said. "I think this would probably be it for me."
Wendy Cambrea, a NICU nurse, knows the importance of these memory boxes.
"A lot of times the parents don't want them right away. We save them here for them, and a lot of times, a year or so later, they'll want them because they have nothing, nothing else to remember the baby by," she said.
Cambrea speaks from experience -- she has been there herself.
"My first baby was premature, and he only lived for two days, and I have a memory of what he looked like. I wish now that I had had something, some kind of picture, something that I could have remembered what he looked like," she said.
The Kahns credit the memory box with helping them hold on to the memory of their son, and to heal.
"It took us so long to have a baby. We just wanted to spend every second with him," Kristen said.
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