A stunning photograph of a mom with her baby in a crib has emerged on social media and it’s going viral for truly heartbreaking reasons.
The mother, Michigan-based photographer Dayna Mager, shared the photo that her husband Matt took when he arrived home one day and found her snuggling with their 5-month-old daughter, Luella, in her crib.
“This was from several weeks back,” Mager wrote in her post, before adding: “I climbed in the crib in hopes to soothe my screaming, teething, blushed faced, and tear soaked little girl.”
“My husband came home to this, and I am re-posting because this captures the essence of my heart, and my ‘why…’ There I was in the heat of this exhausting, beautiful thing we call parenthood, and I remembered a promise I made to her,” she continued.
Dayna Mager / Facebook
Mager recalled meeting a missionary at a Christian worship music concert she attended with her husband. The man shared his experience at an orphanage in Uganda. He said when he entered a nursery with over 100 cribs filled with babies, he was struck by the silence in the room. The missionary asked his host why a room of infants was so quiet.
Mager recalled him saying: “She looked at him and said, ‘After about a week of them being here, and crying out for countless hours, they eventually stop when they realize no one is coming for them,’”
Dayna Mager / Facebook
“I broke,” the mom said of her reaction to the story. “I literally could have picked up pieces of my heart scattered about the auditorium floor.”
“We came home, and that night as Luella rested her tiny little 10-pound body against mine and we rocked, I made a promise to her. A promise that I would always come to her,” Mager added.
“At 2:00 a.m. when pitiful desperate squeals come through a baby monitor, I will come to her,” she continued. “Her first hurt, her first heartbreak, we will come to her. We will be there to hold her, to let her feel, to make decisions on her own, and we will be there. We will show her through our tears and frustrations at times, that it is okay to cry, and it’s ok to feel. That we will always be a safe place, and we will always come to her.”
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