Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

NILMDTS offers the gift of healing, hope, and honor to parents experiencing the death of a baby through the overwhelming power of remembrance portraits.  

 

Mission

To introduce remembrance photography to parents suffering the loss of a baby with a free gift of professional portraiture.

Our Work

NILMDTS trains, educates, and mobilizes professional quality photographers to provide beautiful heirloom portraits to families facing the untimely death of an infant. We believe these images serve as an important step in the family's healing process by honoring the child's legacy.

History

Maddux Achilles Haggard was born on Feb. 4, 2005, 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, Mike and Cheryl Haggard 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.

Those tender photographs documenting Maddux’s eternal connection with his parents inspired Cheryl Haggard and Sandy Puc' to begin a nonprofit organization that has provided thousands of families of babies who are stillborn or are at risk of dying as newborns with free professional portraits with their baby.

Sandy and Cheryl founded the organization in April 2005 and called it Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS) after the children’s bedtime prayer.

Reach

NILMDTS 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.