Big dreams | Seattle, WA Birth Photographer & Videographer

A really big dream is coming true for me right now.

For over two years now I have become more obsessed with capturing birth. It all started when I was pregnant, and through preparing for my own birth and having three sisters, a cousin & several close friends who all gave birth about the same time, I dove into exploring what a miracle this process really was.

Fast forward to April 2013.

I rebranded, rebuilt, relaunched, and have been overwhelmed with the incredible response.

I have big dreams for this business. Not only do I love it more than I thought possible, but I think it is SO important.
Giving women & their families beauty out of what many people sadly believe to be a horrendous experience, that you “just have to suffer through.”
Giving them something that may help them to realize that birth is so much more than that.
Giving them this treasure that captures entirely a day that otherwise would have been lost in a fog of pain and exhaustion.
Giving them photos that can bring about healing.
Giving them moments frozen in time that their children will be able to look back on and see just how much they were loved from the very beginning, whether through blood or adoption.

But I am learning that with all big dreams, I have to let go of smaller dreams.

One of those dreams is to be able to capture it ALL. Bump through baby. I have absolutely loved capturing bellies and newborns, but as I am so blessed to be taking on more and more births, both my family and I are suffering from the extreme sacrifices I’m having to make in my roles as a wife and mom.

This is one of my favorite set of photos of my husband and daughter, from when she was a couple months old, to a year old.
These two are my world here on earth.

I recently shared this on my Facebook page, but I’ll share it again here:

I work from home not only because I am blessed to have found my passion and talents in photography.
Because I have that opportunity to work from home, I want to be the one raising my child… holding her for hours when she is sick or just needs to be held. Kissing and nibbling on her chubby cheeks every chance I get, because I know they will not be chubby for very much longer.
Helping her work through her tantrums. Teaching her to speak, read, write, and do somersaults.
Taking her for playdates to the park. Packing picnic lunches and playing in the pool or splash pad with her, watching her face light up around ANY form of water. Knowing if there is a ball anywhere in her vicinity, she WILL find it and she WILL throw or kick it across the room over and over and over, laughing hysterically as she chases it around.
I love watching her grow physically and mentally, and capturing moments like the one above to remember forever.
My work compliments my life at home, not the other way around.
So as I have had a fantastically busy last few months, I am blessed to have gotten so busy with work that I need to find that balance again between taking on as much business as I can and being the BEST wife and mommy I can be.

All of this to say that I will no longer be offering the same maternity and newborn packages that I used to be able to.

Birth sessions are my priority.
And because they take, on average, 50-60 hours to cover & edit, you can imagine how much sacrifice that is when I take on even 2 per month and do the majority of my work after my daughter goes to bed.
Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE IT ALL.
If I let that passion completely take over, (and didn’t have a family of my own,) I would be shooting 4 births a month,
along with every maternity & newborn shoot I could possibly squeeze in.
But I can’t keep pretending that I have all the time in the world to run a successful full time belly to baby photography business
while also being a full time wife & mom.
Living life on call alone is stressful enough, and even though I always love the work in the moment and editing the maternity & newborn photos afterward,
I am finding that too many things are getting neglected in my own home.
And that’s not okay.
So it’s time to let some dreams go.

Here is the really exciting part.

I have met an incredible local Denver colleague who specializes in studio newborn photography, Tami Wilson.
CLEARLY, she’s *amazing* right??!

Things have just come together so beautifully for us to team up and hopefully start a successful referral program with each other.
Tami excels so well in her home studio, and while she currently takes on a few other kinds of sessions, she really wants to focus in on newborn work and spend the majority of her time there. She also offers fantastic maternity sessions.
And her only child is in school most days.

I am needing (more than wanting) to focus my limited available time (as a young mom with a toddler at home) on birth sessions. In order to give my birth clients, who are making a significant financial investment in my services the highest level of service possible, I need to make some changes. I will now only be offering very short lifestyle maternity & newborn shoots to my birth clients, with a limited number of digital images. And I will be reevaluated even that within a couple of months and seeing if I need to stop offering them completely.

I am SO excited to be teaming up with Tami & now offering a 5% discount on EACH of our services if you book with both of us! And if a client of mine chooses to get maternity and/or newborn photos taken with Tami, a few of those photos will be used in their final birth story video as well.
ISN’T THIS AMAZING???

Go see Tami’s beautiful work and LIKE her Facebook page here, and check out her website here. Give her some love, and let her know I sent you!!
So thankful to have found a fellow photographer who is SO talented with her newborn & maternity work for me to proudly refer clients to!

Thank you all for your continued support and understanding as I navigate this beautiful, exciting new venture of birth cinematography.
I have every hope & expectation that making these changes and letting some smaller dreams go will only make me a better photographer, businesswoman, wife, and mom.

And now I hear my daughter’s teeny voice saying “Hiiiiii MAMA!” in her bed. So off I go to nibble on those precious cheeks.