When my first pregnancy ended in miscarriage late in the first trimester, I was devastated. We had seen the baby’s heartbeat on ultrasound and thought we were in the clear, only to find out weeks later that the baby had stopped developing and had died. Unsure if we had a boy or a girl, we named our baby Robin Christian to honor our friend Robin, who stayed by my side for days though she was caring for her newborn and our faith.

Coming to terms with that loss was a painful process that led me to seek help at KinderMourn, an amazing non-profit in Charlotte, North Carolina, that offers counseling, support groups, and more for families who have experienced the death of a child. A kind counselor named Chris helped steer my husband and me in a productive direction, and we later joined a group of other couples whose babies had not survived pregnancy. 

When I became pregnant again, a KinderMourn pregnancy-after-loss group gave me a place to discuss my fears. Over the next ten years, my husband and I were blessed with four more children. I helped raise funds for KinderMourn as a United Way Speaker’s Bureau member. I set aside my journalism career for the life of a stay-at-home mom, freelancing as a writer and book editor to keep up my skills and document the daily lives of my kiddos with a Pentax point-and-shoot film camera. After my husband surprised me with one of the first DSLRs, the Canon Rebel, my growth as a photographer took off. The instant feedback the screen provided was a happy contrast to my high-school graduation gift from my parents, a Canon AE-1 Program film camera with a manual-focus 50mm lens. (Every frame from the first roll was blurry – and that’s how I learned I needed glasses!) Cable internet opened the world of photography forums to me since images loaded quickly enough that I didn’t fall asleep waiting for them to appear -- shout out to Two Peas in a Bucket and I Love Photography. I was the typical “mom with a camera” of that era as I conducted amateur photo shoots with my children.

Oh, the bunny costumes with farm-fresh carrots, the matching dresses, the babies in baskets…

I had a lot to learn and was happy to practice.

I began to dream about starting a photography business one day.

Around this time, I learned about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and thought, I could do that. I could help a bereaved mother show a picture of her baby that didn’t make people cringe or recoil. I could learn to retouch torn skin and offer a portrait that a parent would want to display alongside other family pictures. I could capture the wavy hair and the tiny fingernails. I could bear witness to the beauty of little legs that would not toddle or run. Other photographers told me they could never, but I knew I could. It was that simple. In those days, NILMDTS applicants needed to be professional photographers with websites where their work could be evaluated.

Galvanized by that purpose, I established my business, filing paperwork in government buildings uptown on Leap Day of 2008, about three years after Sandy Puc’ photographed little Maddux Haggard and co-founded NILMDTS with Maddux’s mother, Cheryl. I chose a website provider, populated galleries with my images, and applied. 

Volunteering with NILMDTS was a way to honor the memory of my first baby and to fill a need I had no idea existed until I saw rough pictures of the beloved son of a dear friend.

So it’s no exaggeration to say that Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep is truly the reason I am a professional photographer. My desire to serve bereaved families empowered me to move into a career that has brought me a lot of fulfillment. I’m not a superstar volunteer. Over 16 years as an Affiliated Photographer, I have served 44 families. Some volunteers serve that many in a matter of months. I have tried to balance my involvement with other responsibilities to avoid burnout and to honor my commitments to family and clients. At times, I have stepped back for my own mental health. The reality is that I am encountering people on one of the worst days of their lives. I can’t bring back their children, but I can create tangible reminders that these children existed and that they mattered. As one grandmother said in a note she wrote me, “Now I can show my friends, my beautiful granddaughter.” In part because NILMDTS underpins my “why” as a photographer, I seek to communicate in all my portraiture that life is precious, fleeting, and worth celebrating – whether I am photographing a toddler, a family, a dancer, a high-school senior, or a preemie who won’t go home from the hospital.

My children knew about my volunteer work from the beginning, though I was careful to avoid editing sensitive images when they were around. A NILMDTS call years ago led my youngest to ask about the baby we had lost. When I told him, he became indignant at my calm delivery of the story. “You don’t even seem sad!” he said reproachfully. I assured him I had shed many, many tears and that the situation was easier to talk about now than it had been years earlier. I was proud that he grasped the significance of a life lost more than a decade before he was Born.

It has been a privilege to use my skills in a meaningful way as a Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Affiliated Photographer. Through my years of service, I have watched the organization grow its robust resource library and support structures for volunteers while adapting to new technologies. Now we deliver images via ShootProof galleries instead of mailing CDs, and we can level up our lighting, posing, and retouching skills by participating in online courses and live webinars instead of traveling to a host photographer’s studio for training as I did as a new volunteer. However, the personal touch remains constant, and each of the 70,000-plus sessions offered since 2005 begins with one photographer trying to offer a bit of hope to a family facing the unthinkable. My own contribution, while minuscule, has profoundly affected the trajectory of my life as well as the healing journey of the families I have served.

What doesn’t change is that NILMDTS attracts people with the biggest hearts.

No matter how much experience I accrue, these sessions never become routine. In part because of my background, I have always communicated through my work that life is precious, fleeting, and worth celebrating.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a dedicated 501(c)(3) non-profit, offers families experiencing pregnancy and infant loss with complimentary remembrance portraits, capturing precious moments with their babies. Your generous donation can help us extend this heartfelt service to more families in need. Please consider supporting us here.