PS – Go Crystal Bowersox!!!  I am bummed that my schedule won’t leave time to go see her, she is amazing!  But it’s for good reason, this newborn session and the Barenaked Ladies tonight!

I might have mentioned it before, but I had been on-call for photographing a birth.  Mom was due in early May, but we thought she might be early… luckily we got her maternity session in the earlier of the two weekends we were considering or we would have missed it!  (those pics will be up soon, I’m going out of order a bit…)   So last weekend, 3 weeks early dad called me at 8AM on a Saturday, he said mom had been laboring all night and the contractions were still 8 minutes apart or so and based on her labor with their 2 year old, today would be the day!  He said he would call back when they were heading to the hospital and if it looked closer I could meet them then.  I was so excited!  I had been getting in the habit of always being ready with batteries charged and memory cards cleared just in case.  So I set everything by the door and went about my day waiting for the next call to leave.

So around 11:45, I saw dad’s name on my cell phone and excitedly answered.  He told me he was on the way to the hospital and the baby was already here.  WHAT???  I thought he was joking…but he told me that she suddenly was about to have the baby and he couldn’t get her to the hospital and had to call 911.  The fire department and EMTs came and delivered the baby on the floor of her entryway and dad was now following the ambulance to the hospital.

So I jumped in the car and drove to the hospital…and I have to admit I cried about half the way there because I was so excited to be a part of her birth and I missed it, and because I knew that it was mom’s dream to have her birth photographed and she missed it.  When I got there, they had just weighed and measured the baby, and the nurses were nice enough to re-enact the weighing for me.  I was able to get some great shots of a proud dad looking over baby A in the warmer, her first bath, her first nursing, getting her feet stamped, the guys who delivered her coming back to get some forms signed and seeing the baby again…and then big sister coming to meet her little sister, along with all the Grandmas and Grandpas and some aunts and uncles coming to meet her.

So like mom said…I was able to get 95% of the things we wanted and what we got were all the beautiful parts.   I was so very honored to be there with them through it all and I teared up going through the images again to get this little slide show (this is not the longer one you will get later mom and dad):

Today I went to their home for her newborn pictures and it was amazing to see how much she’s changed in 6 days.  Watch for those images and the ones from her maternity session soon!