This infant, just a few days old and so peacefully sleeping,  was skillfully captured by the photographer.  The mother and father are happily providing a home.  They are making many adjustments to meet this infants’ needs, including having this photograph taken.  And no doubt they are also comforting this child who cries to be fed, or changed.  Maybe the infant  just  wants his parents to hold him over a shoulder, and pat him (her) steadily, firmly, and calmly to help release a burp or to move a  bubble along in her (his) intestines.  The baby feels better, and calms down, and the parent feels wonderful in reassuring the young one that he or she is there, “willing to accept each tear” that he (she) will weep.  This is joy!  The baby’s parents are assuring him that in holding all of his present present tears, they are holding all of his future tears as well

.  This is deeply bonded joy!

The following poem from the Death section of Poems, by Regena Larrabee Seehausen (1964), gives the flip side after a still birth:

After the Baby Died

There is a comfort in the darkness now, the only thing found willing to accept each tear he might have wept.

It is a heavy vigil sorrow keeps .  My longing arms must cradle the whole night wherein he sleeps.

And my mind sifts the darkness all alone seeking that part that is my own.