WASHINGTON -- A white rose hanging outside the doorway tells nurses that the family in this one room of the suburban maternity ward is different. It puts them on notice not to tiptoe around the curtain smiling, ready to coo at a sleeping baby and congratulate the new parents. That's because this couple is not experiencing the happiest day of their lives, but possibly the saddest: Their daughter, several months premature, was stillborn, one of the 25,000 stillborn each year in the United States.

Photographer Julia MacInnis, 40, has walked into 18 such hospital rooms during the past year. She is one of 5,500 volunteers for Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a nonprofit organization that offers to send, at no charge, photographers to capture images of babies who have died or who are unlikely to live more than a few hours or days.

Many mothers and fathers who have lost their children go home from the hospital with their baby's blankets, a lock of hair or maybe a Polaroid photo snapped by a nurse. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep steps in when parents believe that something more might help them heal.

The death of a child might seem too wrenching a moment to share with a photographer whom the parents have never met. But many parents who turn to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep later cherish the photos taken of their babies. Sherry Petri, a labor and delivery nurse at a suburban hospital who lost her baby in 2005, offers to call the nonprofit on behalf of patients whose babies have died. Some decline, but of those who choose to have the photographs taken, Petri says, she has ``never known of anybody who had misgivings.''

AT THS HOSPITAL

Late one Sunday night several weeks ago, in the dimly lighted room at Inova Alexandria Hospital in Virginia, MacInnis offered her condolences to the parents of the stillborn girl. The mother was resting in bed. Next to her, the infant, her head no bigger than a fist, lay swaddled in a blanket.

After the father signed a consent form, MacInnis began her work. First she photographed the mother holding her baby against her chest. Then the father knelt next to his wife's bed and leaned his head on her shoulder.

As MacInnis worked, a silver Tiffany & Co. bracelet jingled around her wrist, the heart-shaped charms inscribed with the names and birth dates of her sons, ages 8 and 5. ''I do this (volunteering) because I have two healthy children,'' she said, ``and I'm grateful for that.''

MacInnis prompted the mother to wrap the baby's fingers around her pinky, and with a click the moment was captured. When a nurse came in to hug the parents goodbye, there was another click -- that moment captured, too.

After about 30 minutes with the family, MacInnis requested that the baby be brought to a better-lighted room where she could take a few more pictures. This is the last step in all these photo sessions, and it's often the last time that parents see their newborns. And so it was for this mother: After a moment alone with her daughter, she watched her husband carry their baby away. Waiting in the hallway, MacInnis could hear the woman crying.

MacInnis walked with the father down the quiet hall to another room, where he placed his daughter in a bassinet and unswaddled her. MacInnis asked a nurse to clean the baby's soles, still stained with the ink used to take her footprint. She zoomed in on the father's hand cupping her tiny feet.

By midnight, MacInnis had snapped her final shots. As she packed up her camera and three lenses, the father lingered for a few minutes with his daughter. Then he left the room and returned to his wife. They had both said goodbye.

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