Americans Sandy and Cheryl founded a nonprofit organization called Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep in April 2005.
They are into what is known as 'remembrance photography'.
The organisation provides families of babies who are stillborn or are at risk of dying as newborns with free professional portraits with their baby.
Many leading photographers lend their services probono. And till date the organisation has provided this service for thousands of families.
Cheryl Haggard knows knows what it is to lose a child and more than that what it is to have a reminder of the beauty and blessings the child brought into her live.Mike and Cheryl's son Maddux Achilles Haggard was born on Feb.4, 2005. He was born with a condition called myotubular myopathy. It prevented him from breathing, swallowing or moving on his own.
On the sixth day of his young life, his parents had to make the excruciating decision to take him off life support. Before they did, they called photographer Sandy Puc' to take black and white portraits of them cradling their son.
Puc' photographed the couple with Maddux at the hospital before he was removed from life support and after — when he was free from the tubes and the wires that had sustained him.“That night was the worst night of my life. But when I look at the photographs, I am not reminded of my worst night. I’m reminded of the beauty and blessings he brought,” says Cheryl.
Those tender photographs documenting Maddux’s eternal connection with his parents inspired Cheryl Haggard and Sandy Puc' to begin the nonprofit organization.
The organisation has over 1,700 active photographers around the world. NILMDTS reaches every state in the United States and has been or is present in 40 countries worldwide.
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep is named after the children’s bedtime prayer.
Info & Image: www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org
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