There’s nothing quite as magical as the first few months with your newborn child, so finding creative and unique ways to capture those moments is a must. Thankfully, TikTok‘s mommy master crafter Madison Hafen is never out of ideas and her latest was particularly epic.
What Madison thought would be a cute little token of her favorite feature from her baby boy accidentally became an iconic, if spirited, sculpture with a life of its own. The first-time mom decided to make a cast of her newborn’s tiny hand, which she is “so obsessed with,” but the tiny one had different plans and wound up posing with his middle finger raised. Was she listening to “Sorry” by Beyoncé during the modeling process by any chance?
“He really showed me how he feels about my crafts,” Madison joked on the video platform, where she is followed by nearly 30,000 people. The hilarious video of the content creator removing the cast from its mold has garnered over 44 million views — a pretty huge leap from the average three thousand times Madison’s videos are usually watched. Her baby content is by far her most popular, so this particularly uncanny moment generated plenty of reactions from excited TikTok users.
“Oh he’s gonna LOVE this when he’s older,” one person commented, with a few others already thinking ahead to the boy’s first birthday and even his wedding by suggesting he should use the keepsake as a cake topper. Other brilliant ideas included making it a ring holder for Mommy’s jewelry, selling it as first-birthday candles, or turning it into coat hooks for the wall. “I would cherish this forever! What an icon,” another TikTok Mom offered.
Madison did give her followers an update on the infamous statuette in the comments section of another video of the little one’s cutest and tiniest hands. “It’s getting bronzed! Going to be displayed in our home obviously and we wanted it to last forever.”
The feisty hand sculpture isn’t the only thing Madison’s son has that is uniquely his, however — those are the perks of having an arts and crafts enthusiast for a mother, after all. The TikToker made him the prettiest quilt, too, using pieces of fabric from clothes she had thrifted, and got all her friends and fellow moms together to make customized scrapbooks.
Madison is a 26-year-old wedding videographer from Utah and little Setllman James was born August 14. “I’ve never been so happy, overwhelmed, overjoyed, tired, or covered in milk. I feel so far from the woman I was but yet so much more myself,” the new mom told her Instagram followers in a post celebrating her baby boy’s one-month anniversary. She detailed every step of her challenging but incredible journey to becoming a mom, including having to induce labor and dealing with contractions for nearly 12 hours.
Labor induction is quite a controversial subject in the medical community, with some experts believing it to be beneficial to prevent stillbirth and other complications, while others warn against the dangers of induced labor in the development of the child’s brain. According to a 2019 study, “the rate of labor induction is steadily increasing and, in industrialized countries, approximately one in four pregnant women have their labor induced.” In 2021, The Guardian also published a piece about the rise in the procedure, where a specialist explained that it could be the result of “doctors erring on the side of caution.”
Madison and Stellman appear to be doing okay a little over a month after the birth, though, and if that cheeky statue is any indication, she will have her hands full with him in the next few years. Meanwhile, we’ll be taking notes on all those adorable craft projects.
