A very special experience.

Several months ago I had an experience that moved me in a way that I had never felt before. I was booked to shoot a maternity session for a woman who had gone into labor that morning. She expressed how she really wanted to do the session despite her pain and situation since the photos were really important to her. I came to her house and we did our best to shoot the photos through her contractions and pain (looking at the photos you would never know she was in labor!!) We did not do a lot of talking since she was intensely laboring at that point, so I shot between contractions and took breaks frequently.

About half way into the shoot, midwives arrived to the home to set up for a home birth delivery. At that point I did not know she was planning to do a home birth. They asked if they could take her in the other room to check her progress and see if the baby was coming. A few minutes later, her husband approached me and said that the baby would be arriving any minute and would I mind sticking around and taking a few pictures of her delivery. This was something that caught me off guard and I was really unsure. I agreed to stay but told him that this would be a first for me (especially since I had a c-section with my daughter and had never seen a birth before). It was a blur from that point on. Everything happened so quickly and I snapped pictures as much as possible while experiencing the miracle of life. As I watched a baby come into the world, I cried and snapped pictures and couldn’t believe what I had just been a part of. I took photos for several minutes after the baby was born and then I left the family to enjoy their newest little bundle of joy. A week later I was invited back to do newborn pictures and photograph the family.

This journey touched my heart in a special and life changing way. I am pregnant with my second and due any day now and it was this experience that is making me hopeful to have a v-bac with my own delivery so I can have this incredible journey with my own family. Here are the photos we took: maternity, delivery and then newborn pictures:

To view additional work by Beauties & Babies Photography of Los Angeles, please visit: www.BeautiesAndBabies.com