carina romano photography

This is the second birth I’ve been on, and it came right after I finished shooting a wedding that day. I rushed to the birth center still in my “wedding” clothes and got changed in the car in the parking lot. A few hours later, Jubilee came into the world.

When my friends Krista and Blake got pregnant last year, I made the suggestion that I should fly to Austin and photograph the birth of their baby. Surprisingly, they took me up on that offer! Krista was due on June 30th and I had weddings to shoot every weekend, so I could only come down during the week in between jobs. I had a wedding July 3rd and another one on the 10th. So we decided to have me come down the 6th-9th of July. Since most first babies come 7-10 days later than their due date, this was a pretty good estimate of when the baby would come.

I honestly didn’t think time would work on our side, and half expected them to have the baby before I even got there on the 6th. I showed up, and Krista was still pregnant. We went swimming and then after dinner started to call it a night. (I was pretty tired from the plane ride). At about 9pm, Krista’s contractions started getting really bad. At around 11pm, Blake told me they’re going to the hospital. I rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes and headed to the hospital with them.

The next few hours were a blur. I hit a wall around 3am and fell asleep on the hospital couch in the delivery room, and faded in and out of sleep for the next couple of hours. At 6:30, I got Blake and I some coffee. Krista’s contractions were pretty bad this whole time, prohibiting either one of them from getting any kind of sleep whatsoever. At around 8am she started pushing, and at 9:20, little baby Lucy was born! 8 pounds 6 ounces.

It was a wild experience, and my first time ever witnessing a birth. I was pretty familiar with the whole process, so nothing came as a surprise. I actually was expecting it to be a lot grosser than it actually was. Of course, I didn’t post any gory pictures for the sake of general consumption, but I’m pretty happy about these “in between” and “after” shots of the birth.

Holy crap! I just photographed a birth! I’ll have to pick out some “not-so-graphic” pictures to put on here. More on that amazing experience later!