A Britney Spears Family Portrait

As the whole world watched, Britney Spears locked herself in her home with her youngest child, Jayden James, leaving even the most ardent fan doubting her sanity and ability to raise JJ and his older brother, Sean Preston.

But only a few weeks earlier, it was a very different Britney that sat for an interview and photos with her adorable little mistakes as photographer Dani Brubaker snapped pics for the upcoming issue of celebrity gossip magazine, OK!

OK! loves the Spears family almost as much as Us Weekly.

"She was very loving," photographer Brubaker said. "She told me she loved her children and that they are her life."

Far from being the neglectful parent some portray her as, the photographer tells OK! that Britney was "very attentive" to the needs of her sons.

NOTE: We really wonder how much Lynne Spears got paid for this story.

As for the 26-year-old singer's reaction to the cute photos of her with her sons, Brubaker reveals a reaction of a loving, possibly crazy mom.

"I'm told that when she saw the photographs, she literally cried for over an hour and stared at them all night long," she said. Literally.

NOTE: That could've just been the alcohol and pills, of course.

Regardless, the troubled singer is "inconsolable" right now as the chance of her winning the custody battle for her children looks bleak.

"Those boys are her everything, and she's said repeatedly that life isn't worth living if she can't have her babies with her," says a friend.

The friend adds that Britney Spears would say goodbye to the music business (wait, that didn't happen in 2003?) just to look after her boys.

"The only reason she's doing this is because she wants them to look up to her onstage and be like, ‘That's my mama,' and be proud of her."

"She'd put her life before them and would die for Jayden James and Preston. They're her whole world. "Britney has always said, ‘I would die for my boys if that's what it took to prove I loved them. I'd do anything for them.'"

You heard her, fans. Britney would do anything.

Even humiliating herself by parading around in no underwear, running red lights with them in the back seat, dumping them on nannies to go party, and holding them hostage during a three-hour standoff at her mansion. Anything.