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.”