Losing the father of your children unexpectedly has to be one of the worst things a mum can go through.
But it was even harder for Nicole Bennett, whose partner Deonte Bennett died just a few months before their second child was born!
Incredibly, Nicole pushed through her grief for the sake of her four-year-old son Landen, who she’s determined will not forget his dad.
And we’re certain he won’t forget, thanks to the stunningly beautiful, unique maternity photoshoot that Nicole created.
The American mum – who’s expecting her daughter at the end of this month - said she and Deonte had discussed a maternity shoot before he died unexpectedly recently, and was delighted when she came up with the idea of photoshopping Deonte into the shots.
“Memories for the kids, that’s all that matters at the end of the day,” Nicole told KSWO.
“We discussed the photo shoot prior to his death, being the fact our first son was born at 32 weeks, he was early so we didn’t have that opportunity.”
To make her vision a reality, Nicole hired photographer Sidney Conley who digitally added Deonte to the family photographs.
The photo shoot involved a bit of organisation in order to ensure the pictures would work, but Sidney said the effort was worth it to please Nicole.
“Honestly, I just wanted to make Nicole happy,” Sidney said. “I wanted her to look at the images and drop her jaw.”
“I had to position Nicole in a correct angle, correct lighting because the sun was about to set. I had to put her in a certain position where it would make him fit into the picture as well.”
Nicole is delighted with the finished images and posted them on Facebook. Since then, they have been shared over 100,000 times.
“We just put it on Facebook we didn't think anything of it, you know. I expected maybe some likes from our friends but never did I expect it to go anywhere,” Nicole said.
As for little Landon, he was curious about how his late dad got to be part of the pictures.
“He was like ‘Mum, how did you put Daddy in the pictures?’ And I was like ‘well he's an angel now, so we had an angel added to our photos’," Nicole said.
Aww.
