Celebrating a Mama-to-be

I’m going to tell you a secret: I wanted to just shoot weddings.

I didn’t really think the family genre was my thing. It’s probably best not to beat around the bush and just come out and say it: babies scare me. Pregnancy scares me.

But I keep coming back to this…all of the scariest things I’ve ever done have also been the best things I’ve done. Studying abroad. Living on my own. Leaving my full-time job. Meeting people I barely know for coffee (yes, I’m still scared of strangers). Stepping out of my comfort zone causes big changes, and in the case of every single one of those things, everything changed for the better.

In the whole scheme of things, taking Dani’s invitation to come to her new house last Saturday for lunch and stay for a maternity session does not top the list of scary things I’ve done, and shouldn’t even be on it. Truthfully though, I needed it terribly, to be around people and have a chance to create.

But what I learned by doing something I never even thought I wanted to do (maternity photography) was utterly worth it. These photos…I love them. There is nothing more cheerful than a momma-to-be, glowing, simply because she is happy from the inside out.

I won’t be advertising that I do maternity sessions, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do them. I just don’t necessarily want to do them in a traditional way.

I want to do them for women. I want to put aside fears of being too fat or ugly – because what we feel is not what we are. There may be no other time that we are more in tune with our body or even take better care of it. At a time that feels the least glamorous, that is what I see the most. What I see when I look at these photos is a strong, silly, beautiful woman, who wants to cherish a unique moment in her life…

It may be the scariest thing she’s ever done, but she knows that it will change her life for the better.