Fresh 48: Baby K

As a nurse with experience in women’s health (including labor and delivery), a love of birth and babies, and a mama of three with an A+ in baby swaddling, photographing brand new babies is a perfect blend of my experience as both a nurse and photographer.  Interested in a hospital session after the birth of a baby? Click here to contact me for more information on Fresh 48 sessions!

This precious little love made her way into the world just two days before I got to meet her, hold her, and squeeze her mama with squeals of love and congratulations.  Meet baby Kallan, the daughter of LeAnna, wedding and portrait photographer and owner of LeAnna Theresa Photography located out of Long Beach Island and South Jersey.

I met LeAnna in 7th grade, a girl with a stunning smile and a heart of gold.  As we grew up, she had a front row seat to some terrible decision making on my part (I always remember her being way more level headed than me) and we have loads of memories that neither of us will share with the kids who now call us “mom.”  Can I just say, these kinds of friendships are such a gift??  The friends who loved us before we were us, before we grew up and decided who we wanted to be, maybe before we even loved ourselves.  I’m so thankful for her and the memories we are making today, including one of my favorite summer evenings of the year when we headed to the beach for a swim and took each others’ portraits, which included me getting rocked by a few waves with sand stuck in places I didn’t even know sand could go.  I laughed until it hurt, a true gift of summer and friendship.

To say I was excited to meet this baby is an understatement, so when LeAnna invited me to come meet her while they were still in the hospital, I was thrilled.  We talked babies, swaddles, nipples, and diapers (as in the ones for the mom, not the baby) and all the things women quickly discover after giving birth and how truly insane it all is, when you really stop to think about it.    

Later that week when I emailed LeAnna her gallery, she sent me the sweetest note.  As it turns out, she had packed her camera and baby headbands with every intention of photographing the baby herself, the overwhelming hours and days after giving birth made it impossible for her to do so.  I’m so happy that I was able to capture these moments for LeAnna and her family, just the three of them in the hospital, a moment in time that will always be incredibly special to them, with images to reflect on the day when their baby was just two days old.