Shelley Blecha saw something no mother should see.

When she got a call June 26, 2007, that her infant son Nathan had stopped breathing, she rushed to her child care provider’s home near Arnold. But Nathan had already been taken to the hospital. Instead of finding her baby, she came upon bandages, tubing and other medical trash where paramedics had tried to revive her son. He died of accidental suffocation after being placed facedown in a portable crib.

And then she saw Nathan’s brother, 3, standing in the room.

Blecha said she realized her older son, Clayton — also attending the day care — had seen it, too.

Clayton, now 7, often asks for Nathan. He worries about Nathan in Heaven. Sometimes he cries for him at night. He’s told his younger sister, Riley, all about the baby brother she has never met.

Clayton has found some comfort in a stuffed teddy bear he sleeps with every night. It was given to him on the day of his brother’s funeral. He named it Nathan.