Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Just the other day I was confronted with something that I believe is absolutely extraordinary. Something that touched me down to the very depths of my soul and my heart.

I am talking about the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep www.nilmdts.org organization.

NILMDTS quite honestly is one of the greatest organizations I have ever known. This non-profit organization, started only a few years ago, that has grown to literally hundreds of photographers contributing their time and resources.

The Mission of NILMDTS is to create a network of photographers who, giving of their time and talent, photograph a family's final moments with their newborn child. The grieving family, robbed of the gift of seeing their child grow now have the opportunity to receive precious moments they would not otherwise have and provide them with a photographic record of those moments, not only to help give the family closure, but to give them a tangible memory they can hold of their little one forever.

Just think about it for a moment. A young couple rushes to the hospital to have their baby, only to discover that something is wrong, dreadfully wrong and the child may only live a few days or a few hours. Normally, if they are lucky, the grieving family might only have a polaroid snapshot of their baby or may have nothing at all. This is where NILMDTS comes in. By networking with photographers and hospitals, a family going through this unimaginable pain, now has the opportunity to create a precious memory within the confines of the short time they will have with their little baby.

Through the hospital, they contact a photographer who is part of the network and he or she comes and photographs the family with their little newborn child before and often, after the moment of passing. The images are then processed and the digital negatives given to the family free of charge. The need is real and this can and will happen at any hour of the day, often with only a moments notice.

As a professional photographer, I am privelidged to capture so many wonderful and precious moments through my career. I have seen hundreds of couples start their lives together and scores of children grow from infants to toddlers and so on. But some of the most precious and fleeting moments are not always the happy ones. The final moments a new mommy may have with her precious child, sometimes only a few hours old, are some of the most incredible moments I can imagine and the opportunity must be given to these precious parents to grab hold of this moment and keep it forever.

Having just recently become part of NILMDTS.org, I have yet to experience first hand the raw emotion photographing such a moment. However, knowing how much photographing the happiest times of my incredible and dear clients has touched my life, I am certain that this, when the time comes, will certainly change my life and touch my heart and soul deeply.

While I sincerely hope this experience never happens, I know that the time will come that I am needed to help a family through one of the most emotionally devastating moments of their lives and give them the memories, through the incredible power of the photograph, to bring comfort and much needed closure in a time of need.

I, and Colorband Photography Studio are now a part of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep and I am honored to be given the wonderful gift of being able to give these incredibly precious and priceless moments to these families in their greatest time of need.

Roy