Photographing motherhood through active labor

Photoshoot through active labour

She doesn’t know it yet, but in about 2 hours she’ll be holding their beautiful baby boy in her arms and reminiscing on what a chaotic but beautiful evening it was!

Usually, when I book motherhood sessions I don’t like to necessarily wait until the last minute, but in this case Janeen had ordered a few dresses so we had to wait for them to come in. They finally arrived and we scheduled the session for as soon as possible. When I arrived to this beautiful location in Loomis, there were lots of golden poppies and it was honestly so beautiful! This is why I love being a Sacramento motherhood, family and birth photographer! I live in such a stunning area!

I arrive a little early and then my clients Janeen and her boyfriend Tevin arrive in two separate cars. I grab my gear as always and head over to say “hello”. Tevin got out of his car first and kind of whispered over to me, “I need your help with something!” I walk over but Janeen and her daughter, Winter get out of their car and he stops what he was going to say. I immediately know what he wanted, but I waited for him to tell me as we headed over to the spot.

On our walk over, I look over to Janeen and she is having a fairly mild contraction. She simply paused quietly for a moment then came back and was fine. I thought it was most likely braxton hicks contractions.

We start the sessions and I go to prompt her and Winter and Tevin pulls out his phone and tells me he has an idea for a pose. I look over and he shows me in his notes app that he has a ring and wants me to help pose him in a way that he will be able to propose! I first do a little happy dance inside and very nonchalantly say, “oh ya that’s cute, we can add that!” When he got out of his car I knew that had to be what he was going to say cause usually guys during sessions aren’t the ones who planned everything. It’s usually the women and so their guys just kinda go along for the ride. Except when there’s a proposal happening.

Now because I didn’t have time to plan this a little better with him I assumed he wanted to do it kind of asap during the session. So instead of prompting the family the way that I had planned originally for a motherhood session, I started prompting and posing for Tevin to be able to get down on one knee behind her. And y’all, when I say I gave him so many chances for him to pop the question, I mean I gave him every chance! I must’ve posed them in like 10 different variations of him behind her slightly and her ready to turn around. After about 30 minutes, I could not for the life of me figure out why he wasn’t taking any of them.

I thought maybe he’s just nervous and I’ll just keep trying. She has a few more contractions as we go along and jokingly, I said “should we be timing these?” They seemed to be getting stronger and a little longer. She needed Tevin to hold onto at this point. After this next contractions we head back to where we set down all our stuff and everyone changes into their second outfit. During this time he shows me the ring and I’m thinking “ok now it’s go time!”

We start photos up again and again I start posing him slightly behind her so he can get down on one knee. By now her contractions are maybe 5 minutes apart and lasting a good minute or more. So I’m thinking we need to wrap this up. I pose him again and he still doesn’t take it! I was so confused! He finally helps Janeen through another contraction and he pulls out his phone while she’s not looking and types in his notes app again.

“Can you get me the ring?”

I did the biggest facepalm in my head! Like “OH he left it in the wagon so he wouldn’t have this huge bulge in his pocket the whole session! THAT’S WHY!

I make an excuse as she finishes the contractions that I need to change my camera battery and I go get it and give it to him. Janeen stands back up and goes “we gotta go”! Against my better judgement (cause I know he still needs to propose) I go “ok just one last photo!” This woman is superwoman let me tell ya! She agrees and I pose one last time giving Tevin a thumbs up discreetly. He finally gets down on one knee and then she has another contraction! So he has to stand back up to help her through. Once this ones over she turns to go walk back to the car cause it’s now GO TIME for real! And THEN he popped the question!

She of course says, “yes!” and he follows it up with “let’s go have this baby!”

We book it back to the car and they head off to the hospital! I head home and on my way I’m just praying that they make it to the hospital and she doesn’t have the baby in the car. What do you know less than 2 hours later I get a message that baby is here and mama did great!

So much craziness, but so much love and grace through everything! I’m so glad I got to be a part of this story and boy oh boy was it exciting! Congratulations Tevin and Janeen! You guys did awesome!