Baby Day: When Do I Call You?

The odds of me making it to your birth in time increase significantly with every hour of preparation time you give me. We’ll work together to make a game plan that feels right for you.

The quick answer: When you think there’s a chance your baby could come in the next 24 hours, text me.
When you’re past 4 centimeters dilated, or 4-6 hours before you expect to deliver, call me.

This also helps my family to plan accordingly for my absence, and make any necessary accommodations or arrangements in advance.

If you want me there longer than your imminent delivery window to support you, I’m more than happy to walk the halls with you and provide encouragement, ideas, counter-pressure, and suggestions that I’ve learned through working with midwives and doulas.

Here are some factors I encourage birth photography clients to consider:

— I prefer to get introductions out of the way early - while you’re as coherent and relaxed as possible. The earlier we can establish comfort with each other, the better, so the presence of a “stranger” in the room doesn’t stall your labor. Regardless of how much we texted back and forth during your pregnancy to build rapport with each other, it’s natural to be very shy when I walk into your delivery space for the first time and say hello. It’s better to do that before your baby is crowning!

— It doesn’t matter what hour of the day it is - receiving a call or text that it’s almost time to go welcome a new little friend into the world is going to MAKE MY DAY! So if your water breaks at 3am, please know I would LOVE to be woken up with this information. When we text during your pregnancy and get to know each other, and I add you to my contacts, I enable Emergency Bypass and give my birth clients special ringtones and text tones. Most of the time, this means you can text me any time, and I should reply within a few minutes. If I’m not responding after a few minutes, especially if things are progressing quickly or ramping up in intensity, please call me!

— Generally you can expect for me to spend at LEAST 4-6 hours at your birth. The births where I arrived after I got a late call that birth was imminent and I missed the birth, I stayed around 4 hours. Longer births I’ve attended, I’ve stayed as much as 12+ hours. I prefer to err on the side of caution, and come in plenty early for introductions, but this doesn’t mean I’ll be all up in your business that entire time, especially if you’re more private and reserved. I can always hang out in the waiting room, or in my car, so I’m moments away when you’re ready for me to join you.

— By coming in before it’s time to push, I have time to review your preferences with you, introduce myself to the rest of your birth team and gather any necessary consent for them to be included in your photo album. Then I’ll capture some candid shots of you, photograph your delivery, immediate postpartum care and the newborn exam, and and your labor team working with you and baby in your recovery area, soaking up those precious newborn snuggles and settling in to rest in bed. In my experience, this gives us the best results for your final birth photography album, because I have significantly more photos to choose from.

— If you feel comfortable sharing information with me about how your prenatal appointments are going, I love to hear updates in the weeks leading up to your delivery, and it can help us prepare for what to expect! Especially if you’re dilated more than about 3cm at your prenatal appointments, which can be a sign that when your water breaks, things have a higher chance of going from 0-100 in a moment’s notice. One of my sweet clients was dilated to 5cm for the last few weeks of her pregnancy. From the time her water broke, to when she had baby in her arms, was under 10 minutes.

— If you’re getting induced, I’d love an update as soon as you know about it. When are they asking you to come in? What symptoms are you experiencing that could factor into how quickly you’ll deliver? Are you experiencing complications that increase your risk of a c-section, or having a delivery where things might get a bit crowded with extra support staff? If you’re going in after hours, are they asking you to come in through an alternative entrance to the facility? This can help me be on the lookout for symptoms of complications, and helps me plan for where to be in the room, so I’m not in your birth team’s way, but I’ve still got a great perspective to photograph from.

— Yes, you could be dilated to 9cm for several hours, and I could be there for quite a while, as hardly anything happens… I’m VERY okay with that! If you wait until your provider is gowning up and putting on gloves to let me know it’s time to come in, I’m almost definitely going to miss your birth, especially if you haven’t already sent me your hospital room number and access code. If my husband has a work meeting that he can’t miss, and someone needs to be available to pick our children up from school, I may also be delayed as I make plans.

— If you’re considering going into the hospital, even if you think things aren’t really very intense and they’re potentially going to send you home, it’s time to give me a heads up that there’s even a slight chance that your delivery could be happening soon. It’s okay if contractions are 15-20 minutes apart, or if your previous labors have been very long - as soon as you have a contraction that makes you go “Oop… that might be labor…” I would love to know.