Image: Shutterstock
An innocent baby’s smile can warm even the coldest of hearts. And Freya Vinje happens to be one such baby who has won over the hearts of millions of people the world over with her endearing smile.
The baby girl in question might be almost three years old now, but her birth way back in the year 2014 was extremely traumatizing for her Minnesotan parents, Lauren and David Vinje. Lauren, Freya’s mother, had shared the picture of her little princess and the story of how she was born, on the blog “Birth Without Fear” so that she could inspire other parents who have had premature babies.
And Lauren’s story did strike a chord with lots of people. The photo that she shared of her five-day old daughter smiling widely in her hospital bed has now gone viral.
Image: Lauren Vinje via Birth Without Fear
She shared the exact moment of when the photo was taken on the blog, saying that, “I was talking to her and I had said, ‘Should we send a picture to Daddy?’ and right when I was about to take the picture, she had this huge smile.”
She went on to explain how she had always wanted to share this picture with the world because of how it touched her and she believed it could give a ray of hope to other parents who have premature babies.
Lauren said, she and her husband David had given a copy of this photograph to the hospital she was admitted in when Lauren was pregnant with her second child, and to this day, that picture still hangs cutely in the break room of the hospital.
Image: Lauren Vinje via Birth Without Fear
Lauren’s pregnancy was a particularly tough one. She was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a condition in which the blood pressure of the mother increased considerably, when she was 28 weeks into her first pregnancy. She recounts how she always knew what was going on even though her doctors had not confirmed it. In preeclampsia, the body of the mother views the placenta as a foreign object and attacks it. This can be dangerous, even fatal, for the baby.
So back in 2014, November 15 when Lauren visited her doctor he told her that her infant’s heart rate was falling and that she would have to prepare herself for a premature birth.
On the day of Thanksgiving in the same year, little Freya entered into this world through a C-section, weighing just about four pounds and four ounces. Freya had to stay in the hospital for nearly a month before she was allowed to go home with her parents.
Lauren beautifully expressed her love for her daughter on the blog saying, “She was perfect, ours, and worth every single thing we went through to bring her into this world.”
If you are wondering how Freya and her mommy are doing now, you’d be happy to know that both of them are doing well and Freya even has a little sister. Freya’s parents say that she is as jovial now as she was when she was just five days old. Lauren says that Freya is the friendliest toddler in the whole wide world, making friends wherever she goes. She doesn’t shy away from saying ‘hi’ to everyone and is a fun and happy little child.
Freya’s parents were quite touched when the photo of their little girl went viral although they were quite surprised too that it did. Little Freya’s angelic picture has more than 228,000 likes on the Facebook page titled “Love What Matters.”
Lauren’s message to mothers all over the world is that they don’t have to go through these trials alone. Yes, they can always look at Freya’s picture and feel encouraged and inspired.
This is how Freya looks now. Charming as ever!
Image: Abcnews
