Lauren’s Maternity Session | Richmond, VA

They say behind every photo there is a story.  Well, this session makes for a heck of a good one.  To cut right to the chase, I took these photos yesterday morning for Lauren….then she had her baby just after midnight today.  We certainly squeaked these in at the last possible moment!!!!

Lauren is my sister-in-law (our husbands are brothers) so we had been planning her session for quite some time.  Typically, 32-34 weeks is an ideal time for maternity portraits so Thanksgiving weekend fell perfectly in that timeframe for her as she’d be 34 weeks along.  She would be staying with our other sister-in-law (our husbands’ sister, Nina) in Richmond over Thanksgiving which worked perfectly for me as I’d be traveling down from Northern VA and would stop to shoot her session on Saturday the 24th.  So Saturday arrived and with it came freezing temperatures and relentless rain.  Sunday the 25th called for a much more promising forecast.  Fortunately for us, Nina let us crash at her place so that we could shoot Lauren’s session in the morning.

Sunday morning I wake to hear that Lauren had been having mild contractions 5 minutes apart consistently all during the night!  Crap.  She wasn’t sure if the contractions were a false alarm, but was concerned about traveling to the park 30 minutes away in case she was legitimately in labor.  (It’s worth to mention here that she lives in Northern VA and would have to suffer through the extra traffic of Thanksgiving weekend to get to her doctor.)  Despite all that, she was concerned for ME..that I wouldn’t get images for my portfolio at a pretty park!  LOL.  I assured her that she needs to listen to her body and that my photos are not important!  I let her make the call what she’d like to do.  Ultimately, her decision was to snap photos right in Nina’s backyard so we wouldn’t need to go out of the way.  So that’s exactly what we did… parts of the yard were a swamp and mud trap from all the rain the day before, but we made it work!  And I LOVE how these photos turned out!!  After we wrapped up the session, Lauren said she felt fine and chalked up everything to stress.

Well dang, 14 hours after our session and her baby made her debut!!!  Adeline arrived 6 weeks early on November 26th, 2018 at 12:12am and weighs 5lb 10oz.  Mom and baby are doing great!!