At 2.49pm on Monday, children’s toy store owner Anna Davis took a photo of her three-year-old son Alby, snuggled up in his bed underneath a brand new doona cover.
“I can’t wait to go to bed tonight, Mum!” Alby, who was just days away from celebrating his fourth birthday, told his mum.
Exactly 40 minutes later, Anna, who lives with her family in Tasmania, was holding her son as he took his final breath.
After unwrapping a package earlier that day that had arrived for his upcoming birthday party, Alby had been playing with a bouncy ball.
The ball became stuck in Alby's windpipe, and despite Anna's desperate efforts, he could not be saved. It took just a matter of seconds.
Sharing the heartbreaking news with her 76,000 Instagram followers, Anna - mum to oldest daughter Sage, Alby, youngest son Acre and currently pregnant with her fourth child - wrote the gaping hole in the family's lives since her son's death is "incomprehensible".
"Yesterday afternoon, our beautiful, beautiful Alby, our darling baby boy, grew wings and flew from this earth," she wrote.
"Minutes pass like hours... We adore you beyond belief, our sweet little fox. Forever three, forever free."
