Newborn Photographer Confessions

I didn’t used to be a baby enthusiast. Is that what you’d call it? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t one. I wasn’t one of those girls that grew up babysitting (I was terrible at it and have a lot of hilarious stories as proof), and I was never the friend that loved holding people’s newborn babies at afternoon barbecues.

I WAS, however, the one running around with the older kids, throwing stuff, reinforcing poor manners, and encouraging bad behaviors that parents typically were trying to correct. I was the “fun aunt” but not really the “motherly” type. I didn’t want to nurture them, I wanted to rough ’em up and throw ’em in the pool! As a camp counselor, coach, and teacher, I had always loved working with kids. But babies? They made me nervous.

I noticed a change in me once my husband and I started talking about having a family. Despite my quiet fears that I wouldn’t really like having a newborn or that I wasn’t cut out to be a mom, there was this slow, subtle shift towards the idea that babies weren’t all that bad. I started making silly faces at the baby sitting next to me on the plane (and oddly enough, I wasn’t terrified by that baby sitting next to me on the plane like I used to be). I offered to hold stranger’s little ones without really realizing it probably made them uncomfortable. Haha! I’m only kind of kidding with that one.

At some point, I started to realize how cute and snuggly little newborn toes and cheeks and noses were. Not to mention how good they smell. That sounds really weird. But it’s the truth. Don’t hate me for telling the truth! You go smell a baby and tell me it doesn’t smell like heaven!!

Then I had a baby of my own. And BAM. I am a changed woman. I CANNOT GET ENOUGH BABY! My baby, now almost 11 months old, doesn’t even seem like a baby anymore. And I want to squish and love and snoogle every sweet baby I see. Newborns used to seem so fragile and wrinkly and squirmy to me, and I was definitely super awkward when I held them… stiff armed, wide-eyed, frozen face, awkward. Now? A newborn baby does something to my heart – pulls at it, tugs on it, melts it.

A few years ago, I’m not sure I could have pictured myself as a newborn photographer. But these days? It’s almost all I want to do. If I could get a little itty bitty in my studio every day, I would be one happy lady. So that is my current business goal: Snuggle more newborns. And take pictures of them too. 🙂 I really, really love that my professional goal setting can include this kind of stuff.

See? Aren’t babies just the best?!?!

If you like honesty and you can relate to being a mom, you might enjoy:
This.
Or this.
Or even this.