Featured: The Huffington Post

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I'm thrilled to share that two of my images were featured in The Huffington Post's September 1, 2016 piece on strength in birth.  They appear alongside 41 other images that are astounding.  I highly encourage you to check it out here!  

A quick addendum: I have enjoyed getting published several times recently, but - lest anyone believe SLP is rich and famous - I feel compelled to clarify that, as thrilling as all my publications have been, as yet they've all been unpaid.  I could actually write for quite a bit on that topic, but I'll spare you for the most part.  "Exposure" is great.  It's really really good.  But it's also true that it goes only so far - to quote The Oatmeal, you can't eat exposure - for that, you need to get paid.  (Do click that link.  It's worth it.)  

The Birth of Lilly Mae, featuring Robin of Grace Enough for Us - Fairbanks Birth Photographer

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This post is different than any other on this blog - rather than me rambling on and on, it is a wonderful (if I do say so myself) collaboration.  

A family of five, soon to be six.  

I absolutely love sharing birth stories (and reading birth stories, and writing birth stories, and all things birth stories...), but I will admit that I often have a lingering worry in the corner of my mind about telling others' stories - I worry about accuracy according to the family's recollections, about maybe revealing something about the birth the mama wasn't aware of, and in a general sense, stepping in on a story that isn't really mine.  Though I'm verbose by nature, I try more and more to let the images tell the story of a birth rather than put my own words to it.  

This is a glorious exception, however, because I didn't write this birth story!

When Robin hired me to photograph the birth of her fourth child and rainbow baby, she mentioned she has her own (rather lovely) blog, Grace Enough For Us.  It immediately occurred to me that I might be able to pull her in on an idea I'd had for a while, which was to publish birth stories written in first-person by the mama to accompany my visual storytelling.  The thing is, I do kind of feel like a heel asking the mother of a brand-spanking-new baby to write something!  (Because we all know what a new mom needs is something else to add to their to-do list, right?)  Lucky for me, Robin (almost) immediately agreed, and in record time emailed me the retelling of Lilly Mae's birth.  

(Sidenote: past, future, and current clients - if writing up your birth story sounds like something you'd like to do, please please please give me a holler!)

Without further ado, here it is: The Birth of Lilly Mae, by Robin Chapman.  

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I'm so excited to get to share my birth story here! ...Also, a little nervous and starstruck to have my ramblings paired with Sarah's gorgeous photography. (You guys. It's THE Sarah Lewis.)

...okay, actually, my birth story is kinda boring. 

That's a good thing. This one was (as mine tend to be) blessedly uncomplicated. Short version: I had a baby. First, I was pregnant for a long time. Then I had contractions. Eventually a small human came out of my body. It went about like I expected, based on the last three babies I had.

Let me back up a bit. 

Wednesday morning, I woke up to painful contractions and no water coming from my  faucets. (Sarah's note: literally.  Literal plumbing.)  The contractions were annoying, but not a problem. They'd been on and off since Sunday, when I'd decided to walk five and a half miles (because I'm insane) and I expected them to go for another two weeks. With my third baby, my body faked me out in ways that were increasingly convincing for a couple of weeks. The tap water, though? That was a problem. I had to pee every four seconds, so running water was important. (It turned out to be a brief planned outage, thank goodness.)

Anyway, it was a rough way to start the morning. And, as is frequently the case for me in late pregnancy, the day continued to be pretty hard to deal with. There were some bright spots, like a kids' music thing at the university. And then there were some... less bright spots. Like the harmonicas that my kids (ages 1, 4, and 5) acquired at the music thing. Um... yay?

I spent a lot of the afternoon locking the bigger two out on the deck with the harmonicas while I stayed inside feeling fairly lousy. (Still, those darned fake contractions!)  I berated myself for being thoroughly unable to adult. (How are you going to make it through two more weeks of this?!?)

Happily, my husband (Andrew) and I had plans to get out of the house in the evening, which I hoped would keep my mind off the fact that I was very, very pregnant. One of those things was a music practice where I had a good view of a clock. Out of curiosity, I started timing them casually.

7:30 pm- Those fake contractions? Four to six minutes apart. And 20-30 seconds long. Predictably. Hmm. Still, I was reasonably certain this was NOT the real thing. But when, by the end of practice, they were closer and longer, I thought it prudent to alert my husband and the midwives... at least give them notice that it could be real.

8:45 pm- I texted Sarah: "Hey! Heads up, contractions every 3-5 min and 30s long. *THIS COULD STILL BE A FAKEOUT* (But it's getting to where if it IS a fake out, I will be heartily annoyed.)"

Andrew's mom, Bonnie, was already at the house watching the kids, so when we got home, she just went to get some clothes for the night and come back. Andrew had a work thing he needed to do (quickly) (remember, I still thought this was a drill) so I was on my own. Well, not really on my own. My oldest kept getting up and asking me questions during contractions. Usually accompanied by "MOM MOM MOM!!!" and insistent arm or belly patting. 

10 pm- It swiftly became apparent that this WAS the real thing, prompting another round of calls to the midwives and Sarah... and to my mother-in-law and my husband, since I had honestly started to contemplate driving myself in.  (Can we go back a sec and let it sink in that, during what ended up being early labor, somebody handed my children HARMONICAS? Thanks. Back to the story.)

10:30 pm- Bonnie came back. Andrew came back. I bossed them both around between contractions (while scrambling myself) to grab the last minute things. (Except my camera battery. I definitely missed that.) Also, I wrote a medical release for my kids, because the oldest needed a TB test read the next day. For the love. Never, ever, ever has writing a couple lines taken so much time or energy. 

11:15 pm- We arrived at the birth center, met by three women I trust implicitly, one of whom delivered two other babies of mine and also delivered my baby brother in my parents' bedroom when I was 10. Dana's basically the patron (matron?) saint of childbirth in my head. I was 6cm. (Not a fakeout! Hooray!) My thighs were cramping, so I got into the tub. I told Andrew to go find us a name for this little girl. (We've never named our babies any sooner than active labor. Our second was named after she was born, which felt SUPER stressful. The late naming isn't out of a deep-seated conviction to wait, but rather comes from procrastination and denial.)

11:45 pm- Sarah arrived (after dropping her smallish infant off).  About this time, it all starts to blur. Things got more difficult for me and Andrew made it through the names and we settled on Lilly Mae, which we'd had toward the top since we named the last baby girl. He held my hand and was generally awesome. Andrew and Kate rubbed my legs, because the cramping continued despite the tub.

 

At one point, when the contractions were long and the time between them was awfully short, I looked to my sweet husband, holding my left hand, and told him, "This can be our last one. We can be done."

He looked at me with his dreamy, kind, smiling eyes and replied, "Nah. We gotta have at least one or two more so we have an excuse to buy a passenger van." 

I looked at my right hand, resting on the side of the tub. I tried to will it to move. Nope. So I just said, "I wanna punch you so bad right now. I just... can't."

He chuckled. "I knew you would. And I knew you wouldn't be able to. I also know you won't remember this at all in the morning."

(I did.)

(Goodness, I love him. Also? What a punk.)

12:45 am- I checked in at 8cm. (Or 7? It's as much guess as memory. Because labor.) Then it got pretty hairy. I remember feeling a pain low in my belly that registered as abnormal and my brain panicked. "I'm a little worried that her shoulder is stuck," I said, rather rationally. Dana assured me that it was probably just the part of dilation. In retrospect, it was perhaps less rational than I thought to assume her shoulder was stuck when 100% of her was still solidly in my uterus, but whatever. I was in labor.

12: 51 am- Then it was pushing time and two minutes later (for a total of less than ten minutes after that check happened) (don't hate me), she was out. 

12:53 am. I reached for her immediately.

She was wearing part of her amniotic sac as a hat and she was the scary grey-purple shade that they always come out. She was perfect. There was no crying, just a lot of quiet looking around. 

I checked to make sure she was, indeed, a little girl (she was), and we just looked at eac...

OH, CRAP! I FORGOT ABOUT THE PLACENTA!

No, really. I shouted that, because another contraction hit me out of nowhere. My husband laughed. (I didn't know that part then, because FREAKING OW, I THOUGHT I WAS DONE, but pictures help.) It was fine, of course... just a rude surprise as I was blissed out and staring at this perfect (if goopy) baby.

We got out of the tub and into the bed and moved on to all the other things that happen after a baby is born... We were mostly enjoying her and eating ice cream. (Pro tip: Ice cream is an awesome post-labor food if you can bring it.) I was trying to feed her; the midwives were taking vitals and listening to breath sounds... a lot of breath sounds. 

Know what's cool? The pushing part of labor is when the baby gets all the fluid squeezed out of her lungs.

Apparently, two minutes of pushing isn't always quite sufficient to accomplish that. 

So... the next three or four hours were filled with trying to improve her breathing rate and breath sounds and pulse ox. Toward the end, there was talk of needing to take her in, but they tried one more thing (positive pressure air) and it worked like a miracle. (I sound really laid back about this now, but internally there was ZERO chill then... This little girl is my only rainbow baby, so to have her not breathing correctly was pretty terrifying... Just when I was done fighting through all the fear that comes with pregnancy after miscarriage.)

5 am: Finally, she was breathing, settled, nursing.We needed sleep. (So did Julie and Kate, but another mama came in just as as things were settling with Lilly, so... no sleep for them!) We dozed on and off for several hours, then went through checking out and headed home.

4 pm: At home, Sarah rejoined us to capture my three bigger kids meeting Lilly. It was lovely. They adore her. They welcomed us with earrings they made for me and a necklace they made for Lilly (which is being saved for a time she won't choke on it.) One of them piled ALL her stuffed buddies on top of the new baby as gifts.

There were pokes, smooches, and eye-prying. There were lots of squeals and crowding and so much love. Basically, day one as a family of six.

Oh, and harmonicas. No newborn homecoming is complete without harmonicas. (Clearly.)

(This is Sarah again.  For more of Robin's maternity session, click here, and for Lilly Mae's Fresh 48 Session, click here.)

Robin's Family Maternity Session - Fairbanks Pregnancy Photographer

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This family, you guys.  This session was a rare treat.  

Shooting in the direct (brutal, brutal) sun is challenging, both technically speaking and in terms of hot little Alaskan kids unused to this thing called "eighty degrees."  (As a friend would say, our Alaska is showing.)  The difference in the exposure between the sun and shadow is extreme, there's haze and sunflare (which I love, but in controlled amounts), and above all else, trying not to blind your clients.  But as this session reminds me, it ALWAYS pays off.  

This session actually garnered one of the best compliments I've ever received from a session.  Robin wrote to me that when she shared these images with her family, some of whom are far away, they told her it felt like they'd just spent a day at the park with her and the kids.  That hits home in a big way, because believe it or not, preserving a slice of life is one of my main goals in any family session.  I want you to be able to be immediately transported back to that time whenever you revisit your images, to remember the feel of the details of your kids when they were that age, to remember how you felt when you were 35 weeks pregnant (for better or worse, lol!), to remember what it was like to be a family of five about to be six.  

I can't even tell you how much it means to me that at least in this case, I pulled it off for one family.  

Make sure you check back soon to read the next installment of this family's story - the Birth of Lilly Mae!

Strength - Fairbanks Birth Photographer

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Occasionally, I get the opportunity to submit images to publications.  I was responding to a request from a journalist who was compiling a piece on the incredible strength of women during birth, and I had a thought: even if I'm lucky, only ONE of these images will be published.  And every single one of them is incredible.  

And so I decided to put them together here on the blog.  I do have to note that this brief collection is by no means a comprehensive survey of the strength I have witnessed in birth spaces.  Every birth I've ever attended has been a display of grace, strength, and determination.  

I'm reminded of a quote I've seen making the rounds recently: "The way a society views a pregnant and birthing woman reflects how that society views women as a whole.  If women are considered weak in their most powerful moments, what does that mean?"  (Marcie Maxari)

Birth truly is a powerful moment.  

The Boen Family - Featured on Let The Kids Dress Themselves

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Sweet baby Jackson, his parents' loving arms, and that particular kind of sunlight you only see in the early spring when the sun just barely edges over the horizon (for those scant few hours a day!).  What's not to love?  

It's such an incredible honor to share that this session was featured on the photography and lifestyle blog Let The Kids Dress Themselves.  I shared a bit about how the session was designed and shot with the curator there - you can read the full feature here!

Stellan - Fairbanks NICU Photographer

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More than once, I've been rushing to the hospital, cameras in hand, to have bystanders wonder aloud, "are you sure they want pictures now?"  Or "why would anyone want pictures now?"  

This is situation might be my favorite instance to employ the picture-tells-a-thousand-words rule.  

This is why.

Things might be happening differently than expected (a LOT differently), and not everyone would even think to ask their photographer to join them in the NICU with everything that's going on and it all happening so fast.  But when it transpires that I get to be there, I am humbled by the privilege and importance of the images.  No matter what else is going on, it's still your first hours with your baby; still the first time your family has been together.  Yes, it documents the real story, and this includes the sometimes harsh reminders of the locale: an IV on perfect baby feet; a cannula across the softest cheeks.  But just as real is the overwhelming love in parents' eyes, in siblings' reaching hands, and in grandparents' supporting caresses.  These things are just as real as the procedures, the uncertainty, the fear.  And personally, I feel that they are the things I will treasure and cherish for the rest of my life - and making images to document that love is a true passion that makes me feel a sense of purpose.  

The first time I was invited into the NICU was two years ago.  My dear friends Rachel and Nels knew I was in Anchorage visiting family and called me to tell me that their forth child had finally joined them earthside - but that he had to be resuscitated immediately after birth and was being medivac'ed from Fairbanks to the NICU at Providence.  Rachel wasn't immediately allowed to travel with him since she was immediately postpartum, so Nels rode with their baby boy and Rachel waited to be cleared to fly the next day.  I met her and her mother at the airport in Anchorage and drove them straight to the hospital.  

At the time, it was still somewhat unclear what was happening; all they knew is that there was swelling around the baby's brain and he had suffered a traumatic shortage of oxygen (HIE).  After time, it was determined that he had suffered a massive stroke either during or immediately before birth.  To mitigate the swelling, he was kept on a cooling blanket for the first leg of his stay in the NICU (which is the reason you won't see kangaroo care in the first set of images below).  

Though his injuries were severe, the baby they named Stellan ("calm, strength") proved his tenacity right away.  By the time I came back to Anchorage two weeks later, he had gone from a comatose infant to a baby who was exclusively breastfeeding.  The change in him was utterly remarkable, and he's continued to approach life the same way since then, under the caring and loving eyes of his parents and siblings.  

Here are the images. 

On Stellan's second day of life, at the Providence NICU in Anchorage:

12 days later, still in the NICU:

And finally, three months later, at home in Fairbanks.  

The Birth of Emersyn - Fairbanks Birth Photographer

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Sweet miss Emersyn was in such a hurry to join her brother earthside, I wasn't actually there for her birth!  Hers is one of the (very, very) few that I've ever missed.  But getting to meet her within the first hour of her life and capturing that fresh baby goodness - well, it doesn't get much better.

From start to finish (maternity to Fresh 48), here is her story! 

Just this weekend I photographed Emmy's first birthday.  (Say WHAT!?!)  More of this sweet girlie will be hitting the blog soon!