When Your Baby Dies
Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth
Louis’s first book, When Your Baby Dies Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth (Augsburg Fortress, 2002) co-authored with Ann Taylor Cooney, was inspired by the personal experience of losing a child. When Louis and his wife, Marla, learned that their unborn son had trisomy 18, a genetic condition considered “incompatible with life” outside the womb, they chose to give Anthony Francis the best and longest life possible until natural death.
Anthony Francis was born at full term weighing only 3 pounds and he lived less than an hour. He was baptized and held in loving arms for the duration of his earthly life. He had a Catholic funeral Mass and burial.
An abundance of loving support from family and friends enabled Louis and Marla to start a children’s library in memory of Anthony Francis at their home parish, St. Luke Catholic Church in Temple, Texas. In order to create an inviting space, local artist Betsi Chamlee was commissioned to paint an original mural on a wall of the library. Her montage of Old Testament images such as the Garden of Eden and Noah’s rainbow emphasizes the core theme of divine goodness inherent in all creation, “…and God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:31)
What others say about When Your Baby Dies Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth:
“When Your Baby Dies Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth acknowledges the many questions that arise in the bereaved parents’ hearts, and positively provides direction for the challenging journey of grief.” — Cathi Lammert, RN, executive director of National SHARE Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support.
“A clear, thoughtful portrayal of the devastation expectant parents experience when their awaited baby dies.”
Elizabeth Levang, PhD, best-selling author and bereavement expert.
Ethical Practice in Grief Counseling
Springer Publishing Company, 2009
Through his work as a psychologist for people who are bereaved or nearing death, Louis has encountered many different clinical dilemmas. Some involved end-of-life questions about withdrawing treatment, providing artificial nutrition and hydration, or desires to hasten death. Others involved surrogates making decisions for unresponsive patients. Providing grief therapy frequently generates questions about how to protect confidentiality, use best practices, and integrate spiritual and cultural elements into the therapeutic dialogue.
Teaming with co-author R. Hal Ritter, PhD, Louis wrote Ethical Practice in Grief Counseling (Springer Publishing Company, 2009). This text is the definitive source on how health care professionals can incorporate ethical principles into everyday clinical practice. Louis stressed how important it is for health care professionals to possess “death competence”—specialized skill in tolerating and managing patients’ problems related to dying, death, and bereavement. He developed the Five P Model, a framework for ethical decision-making that can be applied to a wide range of practical and clinical problems.
What others say about Ethical Practice in Grief Counseling:
“Gamino and Ritter do an excellent job of providing timely advice and helpful suggestions for how professionals can manage ethical dilemmas that arise from the practice of grief counseling.” — J. William Worden, Harvard psychology professor emeritus.
“Ethical Practice in Grief Counseling may well be the most important book in our field this decade. Grief counseling has become a “wild west” with many practitioners making their own rules as they go. Gamino and Ritter have made a contribution of inestimable value that is must reading for everyone in our field.” — William G. Hoy, Baylor University clinical professor of medical humanities.
“Gamino and Ritter do an excellent job of providing timely advice and helpful suggestions for how professionals can manage ethical dilemmas that arise from the practice of grief counseling.”
J. William Worden, Harvard psychology professor emeritus.
Working with Bereaved Parents: A Practitioner’s Guide
Routledge, 2025
As a result of his clinical work with hundreds of bereaved parents whose children have died, Louis decided to write a textbook for health care professionals and other trained helpers to equip them with the very best evidence-based clinical techniques available. Those efforts culminated in his second textbook, Working with Bereaved Parents: A Practitioner’s Guide (Routledge, 2025). This compendium explains not only why bereaved parents suffer so much but also how professionals can help these parents learn to adapt after the loss of their child.
In this volume, Louis focuses sequentially on death of a child at different ages and under various circumstances: pregnancy loss and infant death; death of a younger child or adolescent; death of an adult child; accidental death; suicide; homicide; and military death. He also explores the dilemma of non-death losses arising from estrangement, addiction, incarceration, disappearance/kidnapping, disability, infertility, and adoption loss. The book concludes by describing resilience among bereaved parents as well as how practitioners can remain resilient throughout their careers.
Working with Bereaved Parents: A Practitioner’s Guide.
“This book is a must read for any practitioner. It is all here…everything you need to counsel and help a family who has lost a child of any age.” — Daniel Roberts, Rabbi and author
“In this inspiring work, Louis Gamino poignantly capture the varieties of parental bereavement and the range of compassionate responses to them. His book will really speak to clinicians doing the work and I have no doubt it will benefit all the people they serve.” — Dale G. Larson, Santa Clara University psychology professor
“In this book, Gamino brings the full force of who he is as a clinician, scholar, educator, and most importantly—human being.”— Heather L. Servaty-Seib, Purdue University psychology professor
“Unerringly informed by his own parental grief, Gamino delivers workable approaches as he integrates theory and practice in readily accessible prose.” — Helen Stanton Chapple, Creighton University professor of nursing