Gift of a Lifetime perinatal booklet

"There is no footprint too small that it cannot make an imprint on this world."

I love this quote that is used by Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.  It is so true!  (NILMDTS is a worldwide group of photographers that volunteer to take beautiful, black and white photos of babies with their families.  Babies that are stillborn, or aren't supposed to live long.  (Read NILMDTS "about" statement here.)  We first learned about this service when I was pregnant with Lilly.

Four days after Lilly was born, a photographer came to our house to take pictures.  (Often the pictures are taken in the hospital, but we left so quickly with Lilly, that did not happen with us.)  Today's pictures feature Lilly's tiny feet, a perfect illustration of the footprint quote above.  :)

About a month after that, through our photographer from NILMDTS, we found out that Focus on the Family was looking for photos from NILMDTS families to use in a new booklet called "Gift of a Lifetime" by Tammy Tate.  The purpose of the booklet was to give information and resources to expectant parents that receive the news that their baby may not survive birth.  We agreed that he could submit our information.  We were excited when we ended up being one of the families choosen to be in the booklet!  (You can see my August 28, 2010 post about it here.) 

The booklet was published and is available through ChristianBook.com  here.  (You can also click through the picture on the right sidebar of this blog to get to the ordering page.) 

This past March, I heard from our contact at Focus on the Family that they needed to do a second printing of the booklet.  This kind woman, who had followed Lilly's story through the blog, said they were very interested in getting some newer pictures of our family with Lilly to show that we were blessed to enjoy an unexpected 17 months at home with Lilly.  So I submitted one of our family that was taken by our NILMDTS photographer (he came back several times!), and a couple I took of Lilly.  The Focus on the Family team selected our family picture and the picture of Lilly from this blog header for the booklet.  What a blessing to be able to share these pictures with others, to give them HOPE.  No matter what doctors tell you - they really just don't know if your baby is going to survive and if so - for how long that might be.  So never give up HOPE!

"All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." - Psalm 139:16