Don’t be ridiculous, of course I have. My teenaged cousin’s funeral, who was killed in an automobile accident, was held at his home and it was beautiful. However, between his death and the body preparation at the funeral facility, the family did not take his body home to his brothers to sleep or cuddle with it. Santorum took a 20 week old stillborn from the hospital to their home. Do you understand the rapid decomposition of this infant?
Acually, the Santorums were following a pretty standard medical-psychologic protocol for dealing with term or close-term stillborns, especially when young at-home children are involved. Every birth has precedent anticipation, joy, excitement. the new baby, before it is born, is talked about, prepared for, in a certain way, loved, as parents try to prepare their children for the new addition.
Coming home from the hospital “empty-handed” would have raised a lot of issues, possibly longterm, dealing with loss, and separation, and closure. This way, the children had a first, fairly healthy experience with a natural death, someone they may not have known, but whom they would separate from... and some of his children may have been at particularly vulnerable ages. The yucky part most people think of is that the baby must have been stiff as a board, blue, etc. But the body is actually prepared with suppling enhancers and lots of chemicals, so it is really more like a baby doll with even a little flexibility. I do salute the Santorums for doing it this way, it was enlightened and courageous, and the children at home, waiting, have a good chance of this being a relatively trauma-free first experience with death. It must have been excruciating for both of the parents.