The click of the camera echos off the dark walls, but Katherine Rodger hardly notices.

Lying on the bed, in the dimly lit delivery room, she cradles her seven-pound, four-ounce baby girl in her arms. She trails her index finger down her daughter's lank arm; cups her wrinkly feet in her own much larger hands; smoothes the mop of curly black hair on her tiny head. A tear rolls down her cheek.

***

On June 2, 2008 – just two days before her due date – Rodger's water broke. After nine months of a near perfect pregnancy, the 24-year-old was ready to see her baby, hold her, hug her, kiss her, love her.

But when she arrived at Chilliwack General Hospital she was told it wasn't yet time; her contractions hadn't yet begun. She was sent home and told to come back in two hours. Still, there were no contractions. She was given a dose of oxytocin to speed up the labour. Two hours later, she was given another dose.

It took.

Sharp, searing, spastic, stabbing pains shot from deep within Rodger's abdomen. She didn't scream, whimper, curse or cry. As gut-wrenching as the pains were, they were nothing compared to the joy shooting through her heart at the same time.

It's happening, she thought. My baby girl's on her way.

***

When Rodger first found out she was pregnant, she had just parted ways with her boyfriend of nearly three years, and was living back at home with her mom. Most young women likely would have been freaked out by the concept of having to single-handedly raise a child, but not Rodger, she was ecstatic. She had wanted children ever since she was a little girl; this pregnancy was a dream come true.

Four of her closest girlfriends had also become pregnant around the same time. They planned first year photos together, play dates, birthdays, they even became mommy matchmakers, pairing their offspring up for life.

Rodger went in for three ultrasounds. At her third, she found out she was a having a girl.

Bows and barrettes danced in her head, shades of pink clouded her vision, girly names exited her mouth one after the other after the other. She purchased doll-sized onesies, dresses, shirts, even a pink ruffled bikini. She painted the walls in the baby's room lime green, and hung up bright pink accents.

She couldn't wait for her daughter's arrival.

***

The fetal heart monitor strapped to Rodger's extended belly shows no distress. The baby's heart rate is averaging 148 beats per minute, never dropping below 140. The regular range is between 120 and 160 beats per minute.

Doctors and nurses stream in and out of the room. They check the heart monitors, check her IV, check the dilation of her cervix.

At 12 a.m. she starts pushing.

Push-push-push. Breathe. Push-push-push. Breathe. Push-push-push. Breathe.

Dr. Martin Dodds cracks a joke sending the room into gales of laughter.

Push-push-push. Breathe. Push-push-push. Breathe. Push-push-push. Breathe.

The baby's head pops out. Dr. Alison Saulter's eyes bulge at the vastness of the black curls on her head.

"I can braid it," the resident doctor says, smiling over at the hard-working mom spread out on the bed.

Within seconds, though, the smile is gone. The room is silent.

The umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck, so tight they have to cut it free.

They pull her out.

The umbilical cord is detached from the placenta.

The baby's face is white like a geisha and her lips and fingernails are blood red. She's not wailing. She's not moving.

The pediatrician, Dr. Osama Ebesh, tries resuscitating her. A half an hour passes. A nurse stops him.

"It's time," she says

2:15 a.m., Isabelle Alexandra Barbara Rodger is pronounced dead.

***

Elizabeth Kowal stands outside the delivery room door holding her camera and professional gear. Her stomach flutters. She's only done this once before, just hours ago.

She got the call early that morning.

A mother has lost her baby, the nurse on the line said. She needs you to come and take pictures.

***

Kowal, a Chilliwack wedding photographer, and former CGH maternity nurse, is a volunteer photographer with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, a world-wide foundation, started in the United States, that provides bereavement photography to parents suffering the loss of a baby.

Kowal applied to be a photographer for the program shortly after reading about it on an online photography forum.

As a former maternity nurse, she had seen first-hand the joys of giving birth, but also the life-shattering sorrows of losing a child. She knows the emotion of a room like that, the shock, the sadness, the tears. And as a photographer, and a mother of three, she knows the value of a photo.

These parents don't have much time with their children, said Kowal. A bond that's been building for months has suddenly been stricken from their lives. Without photos, the freckle on their baby's chin may be forgotten, or their long piano-playing-like fingers, or button nose may become a faded memory.

These babies are premature, not fully developed, stillborn, critically ill. Their bodies are breaking down, their skin is translucent, their colour is not a healthy pink, but rather a greyish-white.

Kowal uses her expertise to photograph these babies in the best, most life-like light possible. She wraps them in receiving blankets, puts newborn toques on their heads, gently places their tiny feet into mom's or dad's hands, captures the undying love between parent and child.

And when it's all done, the grieving parents are given the photos – physical heirlooms they can forever hold on to.

***

Kowal opens the door.

Rodger is cradling her baby; an act she'd been doing now for close to eight hours.

It's obvious the baby has no life, she's not moving, she's abnormally white, but still her mother gently rocks her, rubs her back, fondly stares down at her.

"She's so beautiful," Kowal whispers.

***

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep isn't for everyone. Some parents find it morbid, some find it too harsh, but to Rodger it means everything. The black and white photos, now hanging on her walls, are a way to remember Isabelle, the baby girl, who kicked and tossed about in her belly for nine months, who provided months of smiles and dreams, and who came out of her not as dead baby, but as her beloved daughter.

Isabelle will forever live in Rodger's memory through those photos.

"I will never hear my baby laugh, never hear her cry, never see her smile, never smell her asleep in my arms," says Rodger. "But I'll never forget what she looks like."

krobinson@theprogress.com