These new Americans slid easily into the world, far from the violence and deprivation their mothers once knew in Somalia, Burma and Iraq.

At St. Mark's Hospital this June, food arrived at Amina Mohamed's request the day she gave birth to Sabrin. The Somali woman was hungry six years ago, when her first child was born at a refugee camp in Africa.

For these three refugee mothers, their thanksgiving is for the quiet joy of new life -- captured in a group of photographs on display at the Salt Lake County government building.

Their American babies will be the special ones, the families said through interpreters, with no memory of what came before. They will never suffer the pain of coming home and discovering a bombed house, a family gone -- as it was for Mohamed, then a 10-year-old who had been sent to a shop to buy some sugar.

In Utah, the babies will have opportunities, perhaps even more than their older siblings.

"Even she can be president," said Burmese refugee Tun Win, sitting near his newest daughter, July, who is named for the month in which she was born.

Salt Lake City photographer Stanna Frampton spent most of this year taking portraits of 10 refugee families, three of whom shared their stories with The Salt Lake Tribune.

Frampton, who has specialized in pictures of babies and pregnant women, was struck by how well-behaved the small children were in her studio. None of them cried. For some families, these precious pictures are practically the only photos they own.

The photographer sensed the families' pride.

"I think it definitely builds their self-esteem knowing we care enough to have them come into the studio and take their picture," Frampton said.

All three families hope their babies will grow up to be doctors. July's parents dream their little girl can give back by caring for refugees on the Burma-Thailand border.

Having a baby in a refugee camp can mean minimal medical services at the delivery. July's mother, Thet Thet Mon, said this birth in Utah was the easiest of all three of her children. If the baby had been born in a camp, no doctor would have been present, she said.

Three-month-old Maymoona Al Niemi's family arrived in Utah from Iraq on September 25, 2007 -- refugees almost always remember the exact day their American chapter began. Born in August, the girl's name means "happy trip."

Here, the family has regained a freedom the Iraqi war stole from them.

In Iraq, there was a time when Mohammed Al Niemi's wife and daughters rarely left the house. "Our life was fears and threats," said Al Niemi, who worked as a media coordinator for the U.S. Army and wrote and edited the Arabic newspaper, Iraqi Future.

Militants attempted to kidnap his then-14-year-old daughter. His wife, Wasan Albayyati, walked out of a shopping center minutes before a suicide bomber attacked. The family moved from house to house to try to stay safe.

"We were refugees inside our own country," said Albayyati, sitting across from a muted television turned to an Arabic channel.

Though their path to Utah was in some ways different from what the Somali and Burmese families experienced, the Iraqi family is equally thankful to be here. Albayyati has a new mother's shine in Frampton's black and white photographs. Maymoona, her Iraqi-American daughter, looks delighted.

These refugee moms know Utah is where they can have a happy, healthy baby. Six years divides Somali refugee Amina Mohamed's infant and her first-grade daughter, Ayan Abukar, who loves "SpongeBob SquarePants."

The young mother lost three children from miscarriages while living at the Kenyan refugee camp, the same place where she has now heard her missing parents may be. She connects this successful pregnancy to being in America.

Mohamed says she and her husband, who works at Wal-Mart as a cart pusher, will have as many children as God gives them.

Utah is "the best place [she's] ever lived."

jlyon@sltrib.com