FORT WAYNE — Baby Amir’s crib is lined with blankets crocheted by his mother and stuffed animals given him by his 8-year-old sister. Framed photos of him hang on the walls and sit atop shelves and tables throughout his family’s three-bedroom home.

He has yet to see any of it.

Eight-month-old Amir Alshemmari remains in his aunt’s concrete house in the holy city of Najaf in central Iraq, where his relatives’ home has electricity just two hours a day. His mother, Grace, spends her days more than 6,000 miles away in Fort Wayne, writing letters to everyone from politicians to Dr. Phil looking for help to get her son home.

She’s willing to do all but the one thing the U.S. government says she must: take her son to the American embassy in Baghdad to obtain the paperwork proving he is a U.S. citizen so he can get the passport needed to leave the country.

“Just watch the news, you can see Baghdad isn’t a safe place,” Alshemmari said. “That’s where most of the conflict is, and I think that’s where most of the anti-American groups have centered their organizations.”

Alshemmari, a lifelong Indiana resident, never envisioned giving birth in a war-torn country when she and husband Raad, an Iraqi refugee who came to the United States in 1993, learned she was pregnant with their second child.

The couple met in 1998 and had a daughter in 2000. After dating off and on, they married in 2007. Grace had never been to Iraq to meet Raad’s family but finally agreed because his 86-year-old mother was in failing health.

Her first trip out of the United States began last February when she was nearly six months pregnant. She planned to be back in the United States in time for her mother’s birthday on April 22 — about a month before her due date.

The couple and their daughter spent three weeks in Shamiyah with Raad’s brother and mother, then left to visit more relatives in Najaf, a booming city of about 1 million people on the edge of Iraq’s western desert about 100 miles south of Baghdad.

They stayed too long.

Iraqi Airways officials refused to issue her a ticket to fly home because her pregnancy was too advanced. The airline’s Web site says women 32 to 35 weeks pregnant can fly if they receive a medical certificate confirming the pregnancy is normal, but “under no circumstances will an expectant mother be accepted for travel beyond the 35th week.”

Alshemmari, who was 35 weeks pregnant at the time, was devastated.

“I wanted to come home,” she said.

Her husband said they had no choice. “Let’s just have the baby here and we’ll all come home together,” he said.

Alshemmari agreed, but told him: “As soon as this baby’s born, we’re out of here.”

She received prenatal care in Iraq and gave birth by Cesarean section at a hospital in Najaf on May 25, more than a week late.

The couple didn’t know what they needed to bring the baby home. They thought they could get the necessary paperwork done by going to Iraqi offices in Diwaniyah, about 30 minutes away. After a half dozen trips and a call to the U.S. embassy, they learned they needed to go to Baghdad.

But her husband’s family told her the trip was too dangerous, especially for an American.

“They said, ’We’re Iraqi and we don’t go there. Don’t go there,”’ Alshemmari said.

The couple flew to Jordan without Amir in hopes of finding a solution, even though they knew the United States required the baby be present at an embassy to receive the paper proving American citizenship. They were given a seven-day visa, which Alshemmari said wouldn’t be enough time to get an appointment at the U.S. embassy there.

“It seems to me she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place,” State Department spokesman Noel Clay said.

The State Department strongly warns U.S. citizens against traveling to Iraq because it is “dangerous, volatile and unpredictable,” including inside the Green Zone where the embassy is located.

Clay said the Alshemmaris’ predicament is rare but that the State Department can’t make an exception in their case because its policies for verifying U.S. citizenship are in place to guard against baby smuggling.

“We can’t change the procedures,” he said.

After their unsuccessful trip to Jordan, the Alshemmaris decided to return to Fort Wayne without Amir in hopes of getting help here.

They arrived home Sept. 12. So far, though, little has changed.

“It just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. We’re just mired down,” Alshemmari said.

The offices of Sens. Richard Lugar and Evan Bayh have been involved in the case since late October, trying to determine whether the Alshemmaris can give Raad Alshemmari’s sister, Sadiea, power of attorney so she can take Amir to the embassy and obtain the necessary paperwork.

Lugar’s office set up an e-mail account for her and provided access to a computer at his Fort Wayne office that would allow her to see Amir via the Web camera on Sadiea’s family computer. Alshemmari, though, has not yet used it.

Instead, she looks at pictures and video taken while she was with him.

“I’m torn. I want to see his face. I want to see how he’s doing. But then I know it’s going to kill me because I don’t know how much longer until I get him home,” she said. “I want him so bad.”