Jenn Whitney

stories: alone in a crowded house

Alone in a crowded house

Amie Stamm, Missouri inmate #1080904, spent the last three months of a high-risk pregnancy aloe in a drab concrete cell.

“In there, nobody even comes,” Stamm described. “You don’t have any classes, you don’t have any support, you don’t have anything. So you get to sit there and think about how much you failed, and it’s awful.”

On January 10, 2008, she gave birth to twin girls, Cheyenne and Savannah, at a hospital in Mexico, Missouri while shackled to a bed with a prison guard as her birth coach.

Stamm, 32, was released from the Women'sEastern Reception and Diagnostic Correctional Center in Vandalia, MO on April 18, 2008 after serving a nine month sentence for a DUI while still on probation from her first offense in 2005.

Her sister, Dawn Van Hoosier, took in the babies until Stamm was released and she now lives with her family in St. Louis and is trying to get on her feet in the face of many challenges.

During an interview in the visiting room at Vandalia on April 9, 2008, Amie Stamm, inmate #1080904, couldn't hold back the tears as she told the story of giving birth to her twin girls, Cheyenne and Savannah, in shackles, and shared her fears about her upcoming release. “What I get most is ‘you don’t look like you belong here.’ Postpartum in prison is hell. People have nightmares and things that happen to them, but every night when I go to sleep, I see my girls being ripped out of my arms. People get so upset about trivial stuff here, and, you know, its horrific living with all these women in this place.”
   
As soon as the gates opened on the morning of April 18, 2008, Amie Stamm ran toward the minivan where her family and three-month-old babies had been waiting for more than an hour to take her home.
   
"I can't believe you’re three months old and this is the first time I've changed your diaper," Stamm said to Cheyenne shortly after they arrived home to her sister, Dawn’s home in Maryland Heights.
     
  
Amie Stamm, Lauren, 8, Bradley, 12, and twins, Cheyenne and Savannah, pose for family photos on Stamm's out day.
   
As they watched Stamm's sister Dawn's wedding video at her out day party at home in Maryland Heights, she cried out loud surrounded by friends. Dawn and Matt were married while Stamm was in prison.
   
Stamm shares a moment in the kitchen with daughter, Lauren, after a long, overwhelming first day out of prison. "It doesn't feel real," she explained.
     
  
At her first meeting with new probation officer, Becky Shirlock, Stamm was pleased to discover that she was treated reasonably.
   
On Mother's Day, 2008, Stamm attempts the pogo stick as Lauren and Bradley watch.
   
Stamm reads over letters she received electronically in prison from her ex-fiance and the father of her babies, Brian Smith, as a girlfriend looks on. Smith lived with her sister the majority of the time Stamm was in prison, but proved to be unsupportive both emotionally and financially, so she asked him to leave before she returned home.
     
  
After taking the twins for a spring afternoon walk around the neighborhood a few days after she was released from Vandalia, Amie Stamm returns home with her babies.