Birth Photography: Is It Worth It?

I get a wide variety of reactions when I tell people I'm a birth photographer. I hear everything from "Ew... isn't that weird?" to "That's AMAZING! I wish I had photos of the day my baby was born!"

Our society has always painted birth as something gross and unpleasant - a necessary evil in order to keep the population going.

However, in recent years, the view of birth has started shifting. People are realizing that their baby's birth day is one of the most important days of their life and one that they're going to want to remember!

​For other major events, like a wedding, everyone plans and invests in professionals to make sure their memories are preserved for them. 

But, for some reason, when it comes to the births of our children, we just wing it and hope someone with an iPhone will remember to take a couple of pictures.

Think about this for a minute: this is the day that you're going to meet the little human that has been growing inside your body for 9 months. This is the story of the day a totally new person came into the world. You have planned and waited for this person - wouldn't you love to have photos of this life-changing day?

I get it, though. Really, I do.

Birth photography can be expensive. It's certainly not an amount of money that I spend without lots of thought and planning and budgeting - but I ABSOLUTELY think it's worth it!

Birth photography is not your standard portrait genre. There's a lot more included in the price than most people realize.

Just imagine this scenario:

Think about the photographer you hired to photograph your wedding.

Now imagine you call them and tell them you are planning a wedding, but you don't have a specific date. It will be happening sometime within a span of 3-4 weeks, and you probably won't notify them until it actually begins.  It could potentially be at 3 AM with little to no available light. Again, no way to know.

Also, you're not sure how long the wedding will last. You might only need the photographer for 3 hours, but they might need to be there for 23 hours. You'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

Now, what do you think your wedding photographer would say to you? I'm guessing they'd think it was a joke and hang up on you! But if you think about it, this is what a birth photographer does!

So what's included in a birth photography package? I'm glad you asked!

This is what all of my birth clients get from me:
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-Consultation during the third trimester to get to know each other and your expectations before the birth of your baby.

-On-call 24/7 for your birth starting at 38 weeks until the birth of your baby (and yes, that means I'll jump out of bed at 3 AM for you if that's when your baby comes!)

-Unlimited time present at your birth. I don't have a cut-off time for how long I'm willing to be at a birth. If you have a long labor/birth (Mama, I can so relate!), you don't have to worry that you're running out of time or that I'm adding a fee or anything like that.

-A slideshow and a gallery of your images, so you will get to see all of the moments - even the ones you weren't aware even happened!

-A backup photographer in case of emergency. I only take a limited number of births per month to make sure I'm available to my birth clients whenever the big day comes. However, I like to partner with other local photographers in case of emergency, so you'll have someone there for you, no matter what!

I really do love my job and I feel so fortunate every time a family allows me to be a part of the birth of their new baby.

Over the next several weeks, I'll be posting blogs answering some of the most common questions I get about birth photography. If you have any questions you'd like answered, leave them in the comments!

Think you might already be interested in birth photography and just want to know more now? Fill out the contact form at the bottom of this page and I'll email you more information. We can even set up a totally free consultation, so you can get to know me and we can talk and answer any questions you might have.