Hi there, mama!
My name is Jordan Tomkinson, and I’m so excited to be part of your birth team! While this page is primarily my birth photography portfolio and blog, I am also a Birth Worker with Utah Birth Suites, a Certified Neonatal Resuscitation Program Advanced Provider, and a Certified Victim Advocate. In 2025, I hope to begin Phase 2 of Student Midwifery, and take some Doula classes. I primarily take photography clients in Utah County.
When I’m not behind the camera, I keep myself busy with my husband Chris, and our 3 awesome kids. In my downtime, I enjoy knitting, crochet, drawing, painting, collecting my favorite albums on vinyl, playing Baldurs Gate 3, running Dungeons & Dragons one-shots for friends, getting about 20 hugs a day from my youngest, having movie marathons, and taking our kids on spontaneous overnight adventure trips. I also love landscape photography and astrophotography!
My husband and I enjoy walking together, taking bike rides and swimming with our kids, and working together on his Twitch and YouTube stream, where he holds speedrun records for a retro Nintendo video game called Super Metroid. We love the retro speedrunning community, and have enjoyed attending GamesDoneQuick with many of our friends!
I envisioned myself working in Labor & Delivery in a hospital setting. I went through certification to become a Certified Nurse Assistant in my senior year of high school, with the intent to work at a hospital while becoming a Registered Nurse, and I dreamed of being in Labor & Delivery, helping families bring their little ones into the world. Plans changed, I got married, had 3 incredible children, and decided to hold off on college. I also took a Victim Advocate class from the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault in 2021.
One of my wonderful sisters-in-law became a doula, and then a midwife, with Utah Birth Suites. Another sister-in-law took their Birth Worker class, and they’ve worked closely together for a while now. I really wanted to take the Birth Worker class too, and finally did in Summer 2024. They taught us many great skills to assist midwives at births, like medical charting, preparing medications, tools, and supplies, placenta examination, newborn exams, cleaning and sterilizing the birth space, assisting with complications, activating Emergency Response Teams, and certifying us as Neonatal Resuscitation Program Advanced Providers. I’m hoping to take a doula course in 2025, and in the process of becoming a Student Midwife!
More
About
Jordan:
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I first became interested in photography when I saw a documentary about National Geographic photographers, and fell in love with the idea of traveling the world and taking photos of stunning landscapes around the globe. My parents used to buy me disposable film cameras often as a child, and my mother regularly let me use her point-and-shoot digital cameras. I took a photography class in middle school, borrowed cameras from besties and hipster boyfriends throughout the years, and finally bought my first entry level DSLR in 2011.
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My maternal grandmother Mary Brown taught me how to crochet when I was a young child, but I think I was still a bit too young to get the hang of it just yet. My mom bought me a How To Crochet tutorial book with step by step photos when I was a bit older. I didn’t break into knitting until about 2010, trying to learn with a bestie while we sat shoulder to shoulder, hunching over her tiny 9” mini laptop, and that didn’t go very well. But I kept my tools, and came back to it in 2018 as a hobby to help me manage my severe postpartum depression and anxiety.
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I used to listen to a wide variety of alt-rock, indie, hardcore, pop, emo, japanese heavy metal, and punk music in high school, and still enjoy those albums I’ve listened to hundreds of times. I also enjoy listening to the rock and metal music my parents raised me on in the 90s. These days, I also listen to a bit of EDM, indie, singer-songwriter, pop… and Dustin Kensrue of our favorite band Thrice is slowly convincing me that I can enjoy some country-ish indie music.
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I’m an only child! A bit of a unicorn in Utah, I know! My parents both came from large families. My dad is child #4 out of 7, and my mom is child #7 out of 10. Combined with my husband being child #7 out of 7, and many of those children each having anywhere from 3-5 children, our wedding guest list surpassed 170 guests with family alone.
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It’s not in the stars for us. My body is NOT cut out for postpartum. After each of my children, I experienced severe clinical depression, anxiety, OCD, intrusive thoughts, and suicidal ideation. I’ve since learned that my body doesn’t make it’s own progesterone, which is a significant contributing factor, in addition to some C-PTSD from my youth. I think my husband could handle another one, but I definitely cannot. So he’s had a vasectomy, and I’ve got an IUD!
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Lucky 13 Bar & Grill SLC’s Celestial Burger, add fresh garlic, with no tomatoes, and fried dill pickle spears on the side. Fudge brownies for dessert, and an ice cold Dr. Pepper.
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As of writing this in early 2025, my oldest, Sam, my only son, is about to turn 11. My middle child, Natalie, is about to turn 8. And my youngest, Allison, is 6 1/2.
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We have 3 cats! Our oldest, Nia, is a sweet angel baby. I got her for my husband back in 2011 when she was just a few weeks old. We’ve had a couple of cats since then who have passed away, and one who we re-homed to my In-Laws after their last senior cat passed away. We also briefly had a chocolate lab, Kaiya, who we re-homed to a family with older kids due to some behavioral issues that made her incompatible with babies. Our two other cats currently in the family are sisters, (Mary) Jane, and (Gwen) Stacy - we’re big Spider-Man nerds in this house. They’re almost 2 years old. Stacy looks just like Nia when she was younger, but with big green eyes. Jane looks (and acts) like a raccoon we plucked out of a dumpster behind a Wendy’s.
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Iceland. Japan. Alaska. Norway. Thailand. Spain. Afghanistan. Jordan. New Zealand.
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I was invited to join multiple games throughout my high school years, but for one reason or another, was never able to do more than make a character sheet here and there. After many years of expressing interest in joining other people’s campaigns, I finally started my own in 2018 with a bunch of great friends! Our in-person games ended in 2020, and I ran and played in some virtual games on Discord. I joined another in-person game later in 2020, and have ran 4 homebrew one-shots in the years since. When I’m not running the game as the Dungeon Master, I love playing spellcasters… mostly wizards and witches!
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A few! I’ve put the most hours into Baldurs Gate 3, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, and other charming indie games like Untitled Goose Game, Little Witch in the Woods, and Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. My husband and I dominated the neighborhood in Pokemon Go. As a kid, we were pretty poor, so my dad mostly bought driving games he was also interested in, like Driver, Grand Theft Auto, Need For Speed: Underground 2, Gran Turismo 4, Midnight Club 2, and ATV Offroad Fury 4. I have fond memories of being really little and playing Nintendo games like Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and F-1 Race.
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An astronaut. Space is one of my favorite special interests, but math and I do not get along.
Top items on my bucket list include experiencing zero-gravity, seeing 100% totality during a solar eclipse, photographing a rocket launch at close range, seeing the highest intensity Northern Lights from somewhere in Alaska, Canada, or Iceland (I got to see them here in Utah in 2023 at Bear Lake and it was BREATHTAKING!) and getting to see the Space Shuttle in person.
Sometimes when my husband is having trouble falling asleep, he’ll ask me to ramble space facts to him, because he “likes hearing me talk.” It’s very effective.