birth photography :: lexi joy

The birth photographer life is a crazy one, sisters. Well, any kind of birth worker life is crazy, really. But in this story, i’m playing the role of photographer (for the 3rd time for this family!). And on a pretty typical weekday evening I got a text from Jed (the baby daddy) at about 9:50 pm saying he was pretty sure that Kati might be in labor and he’d touch base again in a half hour. Knowing how fast Kati’s last labor went, I wasn’t sure waiting a half hour was smart and I mentally started preparing to leave home soon. A few minutes later I got a second text from Jed. It said, “come now.” I peed. Before I could stand up from the toilet I got another text that read: “baby’s born.”

I am not kidding you. It was about 8 minutes from the first text to the third. There was literally no way I would have gotten there in time. Which is sad, because what I missed was a very sudden (precipitous is the word!) birth in the shower, in which baby was caught by a very startled daddy! Oh how I would have loved to have images of that amazing moment.

All the same, I got in the car immediately and headed out so that I could document the afterglow. And there was plentiful, gorgeous afterglow, as you will soon see. The midwife arrived just a few minutes before I did, but also missed the birth.

This is a risk when you hire a birth photographer, of course, because you never can truly know the course your birth will take until you’re living it. And it WILL throw us curve balls, and sometimes your birth team WILL miss it entirely, even when they’re moving as quickly as possible based on the information they have available to them. But it’s still worth it, and I’ve come to believe that whomever is at a birth is exactly who is meant to be there. It’s never a mistake, and it will always be a good story in the end. The Father has a good sense of humor, but more than that He is trustworthy.

I’ll be taking a sabbatical for a couple of months this fall and therefore won’t be taking on any sister-clients with EDDs between September 8 and November 10. But I am booking for dates between now and September (no, it’s not too late!) as well as for mid November and onward. Reach out.