Benjamin Scot Miller celebrated his son’s first birthday by publishing a video. It went viral instantly.
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Named Ward Miles, the little boy was born 15 weeks early. His parents, Benjamin and Lyndsey from Columbus, Ohio had a very tough first year, putting everything they had into just helping him to survive.
Benjamin, a photographer, documented this first year—from the first 107 days in the hospital, fighting for life up until Ward’s first birthday at home—and captured it in a seven minute film which he gave as a beautiful present to his wife.
The film was posted on Vimeo and Youtube the 1st of November. Benjamin’s goal was to give hope to the parents of preemies.
He did not expect that it would go massively viral. After ten days, Benjamin writes on his facebook page that he had “never imagined it would have quite the impact it is having. There have been so many nice things said about it, and a lot of people have shared how it has been encouraging for them.” At that time, the video had been seen 8,500 times. And Ward’s father was already impressed.
Following his timeline, we see Benjamin Miller getting more and more amazed by the success of his film.
On the 21st of November, twenty days after video’s upload, he writes “Yahoo posted it front page, DailyMail had it front page this morning (…) CNN.com will be posting it on Saturday. VIRAL. Unreal. God knew I would make this video. He knew MILLIONS would be touched by it. That is why Ward was born early…..”
Ward’s first year has now been watched 22 million times from the 1st of November.
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Benjamin Scot Miller’s Facebook, Instagram and website.
Extended story and pictures: Daily Mail
My niece was born 11 weeks early, weighed just barely two pounds and spent the first 10 weeks of her life in the NICU. The first two days, her parents were told to prepare for the worst; she was gravely ill, and her chances of survival were put at 50-50, at best. The morning of the third day, when she managed to pull out her breathing tube, we knew she was going to make it. This video made me cry; it brought back a lot of memories of those days, especially when Lyndsey Miller gets to hold her son for… Read more »
My son was born 12 weeks early on October 22, 2013 and he spent 57 days in the NICU. This video started making the rounds while we were in a thick of that situation. It’s a very intense time for a family and the fear/joy/guilt that you feel as a mother watching your extremely premature baby knock over every obstacle in his way, proving he is stronger than any adult you know, is something I am not eloquent enough to capture accurately. Benjamin did a very nice job with this video and it gave me the hope he intended during… Read more »