Mom thanks stranger who soothes crying infant on early flight

Imagine that you’ve just settled into your seat on a ridiculously early flight, secured your neck pillow and closed your eyes, hoping that you’ll be asleep before the flight crew is reminding everyone how seat belts work.

Then you hear it: an inconsolable infant, shrieking at a decibel level that could peel the decals off the emergency exit door. Yeah, I know exactly what facial expression you’re making right now, because it matches my own. But we’re not Nyfesha Miller.

Miller had just taken her seat on a 6 a.m. flight from Chicago-O’Hare to Atlanta when she heard a crying baby in the back of the plane. But that sound got closer…and closer…as the baby and her young mother were moved to the empty aisle seat beside Miller.

“I didn’t even look over right away,” she confessed to MLive. But when she did, she saw a clearly stressed mom who was doing everything she possibly could to calm her infant down.

Miller, an actress who has three children of her own, asked her new seatmate, Rebekka Garvison, if she could try to soothe her baby girl. Garvison, who was taking her very first solo trip with 4-month-old Rylee, handed her over. And – believe it or not – the baby fell asleep.

“I thought: ‘Baby feels what mom is feeling, and baby is not going to stop crying. If I don’t help her, that baby is going to be crying the entire flight," Miller told MLive.

Rylee snoozed for the duration of the trip, while Garvison and Miller talked softly. When the flight landed in Atlanta, Miller stayed to help Garvison carry Rylee’s stroller, diaper bag and other infant-related accessories off the plane.

They exchanged phone numbers and even became Facebook friends. Garvison, who was on her way to surprise her husband, an Army firefighter at Ft. Rucker, Ala., stopped long enough to thank Miller on social media, a post that has been shared more than 86,000 times at the time of publishing this article.

“Nyfesha Miller, you will never understand how happy this act of kindness has made my family. You could’ve just rolled your eyes and been irritated like everyone else, but you took her and held her the entire flight and let me get some rest and peace of mind. It brought tears to my eyes while I sat there and watched you and Rylee sleeping next to me. I just couldn’t believe how that ended up working out and how caring you were to us. Thank you SO much,” Garvison wrote in the post.