When Abbie first contacted me about birth photography at the end of January, she was a little more than 38 weeks pregnant. Before getting her email, I had recently decided that I would use the rare window of off-call time I had before going on call for my next birth client to attend a photography conference in Las Vegas called Project Obscura at the end of February. So when we chatted, we discussed the fact that I’d be out of town for a couple of days, but neither of us was too worried about it because I wasn’t leaving until after she would have been 42 weeks. We were both fairly confident she’d have a baby by then…
But birth is nothing if not unpredictable.
And the uncertainty surrounding birth is exactly why I insist on having a backup birth photographer ready to go if I can’t be there. Truly, if you interview a birth photographer who doesn’t use backups, RUN. It’s just so important. This job is my greatest passion, and the very last thing I ever want to do is miss a birth that I was hired for. But I am human, after all. I could get in a car accident or have some other kind of emergency. I could have a highly contagious illness that might prevent me from being in a birth space (though I really do so much to keep my immune system working well and prevent illness!). Or, I could be at another birth. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s always possible that two clients’ labors could overlap. Remember how birth is unpredictable?
I’m super lucky to have a community of photographers here in St. Louis who specialize in birth to call on if I find myself in a situation that requires backup. But I always have at least one of them who is ready to go at any given time while I’m on call. If my ringer is on and my camera is charged up, so are theirs.
In this particular situation, I called on Katie Gaeta, of Katie Gaeta Photography to back me up throughout my on-call period for Abbie. She also agreed to be the primary photographer on call for those two days I’d be in Las Vegas, should Abbie go into labor during that time.
I let Abbie know from the start that, if I had to send a backup photographer to her birth for any reason, I trust them to navigate the birth space with grace, reverence, and ease, while competently capturing all the important moments that make up her birth story. Then, the backup photographer would hand over all the RAW files for me to post-process. A great deal of what makes a photographer’s style happens during the editing phase. Because I edit the photos myself, I feel that I’m able to deliver a gallery to my clients that reflects the style they hired me for, as closely as possible.
So, of course, since we all expected that Abbie would have her baby before my plane ever left the ground, we found ourselves staring down the hours before I left with a still pregnant belly and no labor to speak of. That afternoon, I passed the torch to Katie and did the best I could to let go and trust that Abbie’s story was in good hands.
A couple of hours after landing in Las Vegas, I got a group text from Abbie’s husband, Ryan, letting me and Katie know that labor had started and was gaining intensity. Shortly after that, there was another message that the midwife was on the way. I watched from afar as Katie communicated with my clients as if they were her own. She was kind, responsive, and ready to go.
And go she did. While I was many states away, she filled my shoes and documented the beauty, vulnerability, strength, support, and connection that inhabited Abbie’s birth space. I returned home to beautiful images that became the foundation of the artistic hand edits I work so hard to give each and every family who hires me.
Through all the births I’ve documented, I’ve only had one close call with overlapping labors (that spaced out enough for me to attend both), and no other reason to call on a backup. Nevertheless, it brings me such solace to know I have that backup available if I ever need it. And for my first time relying on that backup, I couldn’t be more grateful to have had Katie there to fill in. As someone who liked to do all the work for group projects back in school, this became such a beautiful experience of trust and collaboration for me.
Take a look at Abbie’s birth story here, and see for yourself how that teamwork made some pretty incredible birth art.
