Born to die: Florida's infant mortality crisis - A special report

[In It to Win It]

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Tiffanie Williams holds framed photos of her stillborn son Liam, who died in 2016. (Will Dickey/Contributor)


For 24 hours in a Jacksonville hospital, Tiffanie Williams clutched her son to her chest, stroking his face gently and singing him hymns.

Liam, only 10 ounces and 10 inches long, smaller than a water bottle, never met his mother’s gaze. He never squirmed or grasped his mother’s finger.

Williams could hear babies crying as she recovered from her delivery in the maternity ward.

Liam never cried.

Liam had visitors. His father. His aunts. His grandmother.

One of his visitors was a pastor who performed the rites of passage over Liam as Williams wiped away a continuous flow of tears. Liam, too premature to live outside the womb, never took a breath.

“I got to keep him and hold him all night,” said Williams, who cradled Liam’s limp body close in her hospital bed.

She was handed a pen. Then a death certificate. Her hand trembled as she signed it. Next came a list of funeral homes. She stared at it.

She handed Liam to a nurse and left the hospital with grief she never thought possible. Three days after his birth, Williams buried her son.

Each year in Florida, this “gut-wrenching heartbreak,” as WIlliams describes it, occurs hundreds of times: More than 1,300 babies a year, about four a day, die in Florida. In the early 2000s, the infant mortality rate was higher, but dropped slightly and then plateaued about a decade ago. Despite a declining birth rate, and millions of dollars spent by the state in the past 10 years on maternity programs, research, outreach and reports, the rate of infant mortality remains unchanged.