Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Thursday, July 27th 2006, 10:31 am

By: News On 6

Area photographers are volunteering their time to help Tulsa parents through some very difficult times. They work with a national organization called "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" to capture the memory of babies taken too soon.

News on 6 reporter Ashli Sims says the work is touching photographers' lives and easing the pain of grieving parents.

"His little booties that match it, which he never wore." A box of keepsakes, a little hat; a new toy is all Angeletta Michael has left of her baby boy. "I named him Cooper James Michael. He's named after my dad."

Angeletta says her pregnancy with Cooper James or CJ as she was going to call him started off perfectly normal. She says she was in her seventh month and had just gone in for a regular check-up. "We were in the ultrasound room and she said I can't find a heartbeat and he's not moving. And then she would push on my stomach to try to get him to move. and he wouldn't."

CJ left the world, before he'd really entered it, devastating this young mother. That's when an Owasso photographer stepped in to make sure she would have something to preserve the precious memory of her son. â€œHe showed up there within an hour of me giving birth. He took pictures of me and Cooper, that's my boy."

Loy Payne is with an organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. Its a network of photographers that volunteer their talent to take free professional photographs of families facing the loss of an infant. "Its just the satisfaction of being able to give someone something that can help hopefully relieve their grief and they can have something to hold on to."

Payne says at first doctors were skeptical that his services were absolutely free, but now they've given him his highest compliment. â€œHe came up to me and said boy you do something good and I told him a little later that pat on the back pays for a lot of mileage."

And with every photo a little of the pain fades away. Angeletta Michael: â€œIt was just gorgeous I was so pleased with it. Now that I have everything of his. I feel like I can start to move on."

To find out more about "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep", CLICK HERE.