The heartwarming photo is going viral.
Going to the doctor is stressful enough, but going with a baby in tow adds a whole other layer to it. But an act of kindness from a stranger made it easier for a mom to fill out the necessary paperwork while keeping her baby calm.
A man named Joe Hill was sitting across from the mom, who was trying to figure out how to juggle her sleeping baby and the clipboard full of paperwork she’d just been handed. Hill asked if she might like him to hold the baby while she filled out her paperwork. When she said that’d be OK, he soothed the baby until it was time to return the 1-year-old back to the arms of his mother.
The sweet moment shared between strangers was caught in a photo by Natasha Wilson, who was also in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, and posted the moment to Facebook:
“I was in the waiting room at the doc office today and this lady walked in with her sleeping baby! They handed her paperwork to do [and] as she was sitting there trying to figure out how to hold her sleeping baby while filling out the paperwork, this man, from across the room, asks her if she would like for him to hold her baby while she did her paperwork,” Wilson recalled in her post. “This man went over there and rocked and loved on that baby like he was his!! My heart melted!!!”
“This man gave me hope [and] a sweet memory I’ll never forget,” Wilson wrote.
The post has since been shared over 400,000 times, so clearly, there are many people out there who found this moment heartwarming.
Wilson didn’t know the man’s identity when she first posted the photo, but his family members saw the post and recognized Hill. He has reached out to her since the photo went viral, according to Inside Edition.
“That’s just who I am,” he reportedly told her. “All the children I know call me Papa Joe.”
This isn’t the first time a complete stranger has stepped up to help a parent when they needed it the most. When Rebecca Paterson’s 2-year-old and 2-month-old both decided to throw tantrums at Target, she was glad to have a stranger and fellow mom, Tiffany Guillory, nearby to offer a helping hand.
The mom later posted about the stranger’s kind deed, writing, “I am so sleep deprived and was running on empty. A little kindness and understanding goes a long way,” according to the Houston Chronicle.
It’s people like Hill and Guillory that remind us how one small act of kindness can have a major impact!