Mother Hands Birth Photography & Film, LLC

06/21/2025

06/17/2025

🏡 Home is your baby’s very first world 🏡

And it feels like a whole new one for you too when your baby joins in.

With an in-home Welcome Baby session, you can relax, feed, and snuggle while we quietly document these fleeting moments. No pressure, no need to go anywhere. Just your story, your space, your love. Just as it all is.

Follow the link in the bio to connect and book your session

06/13/2025

Every now and again, a baby wears a smile right from the start. And sometimes, mom does too. 🥹

04/22/2025

When the very first, tender touch is your mama's own hands,

When the very first voices you hear are mama's joy, mingled with relief, and daddy's "Welcome to the world, Sweetie Pie,"

When the first environment you find yourself surrounded by is your home, warm and ambient and full of faces of the ones you will come to know and love for all your life,

When the concordant music of voices sounds of awe and wonder and curiosity and unparalleled joy,

When your grandma watches her own baby girl birth her tenth child with confidence and strength and power,

When your family is born anew all under the same roof,

You know you're right where you're supposed to be.

Home.

10/07/2023

Surprise! I’ve been SUPER absent from social media for a LONG time because our family has been enjoying a slow and quiet pregnancy and soaking in a month of delicious baby snuggles and beautiful new family ties with the arrival of our fourth and final baby.

Baby girl was born at home in a supremely and indescribably magical moment of pure, undiluted joy. I wish everyone who wanted to could birth supported in the way that I was. And while (for the second time…because my labors are just weird and wild) our birth photographer was not there for the swift active labor and birth, she was there before and during the immediate postpartum period. My wonderful husband and doula stepped up again to grab some photos during labor. I’m so grateful to have these treasures so I can forever return to these hours.

I look forward to sharing more of our experience and to sharing some photos from the last birth I attended during my pregnancy in the coming weeks and months.

05/18/2023

📣 Announcement time! 📣

When I enter into your birth space, from the moment we email, text, and chat face-to-face to the birth itself and for an indefinite time after you receive your gallery and legacy box, you are placing trust in me to hold your vulnerabilities. And often, because we become or already are friends, I do share from time to time. But, often, you open your lives and this season of intimacy without any expectation of reciprocity from me.

And because I don't see my work with you a business transaction, this is such a beautiful and weighty privilege.

There are times, however, when I want and need to share with you as individuals, families, and as an audience. Today is one of those days.

Over the past several years, my family has grown, and our hearts have grown immeasurably larger.

We are in a season. A season of fullness. And it has created this gracious space within my heart to comprehend the magnitude of what this means as my role as a mother in my home. As a wife. As a homeschool family. As a family of faith. As a family that deeply desires to fill the cups of those within our home more fully than "just enough."

With that in mind, I have made some decisions that will shift some of the work that I will be blessed to do for the remainder of 2023 and throughout much of 2024. For me, this is quite difficult, but necessary to preserve the filling of my own cup with the limited time I have outside of serving my own household in this season.

These shifts/changes/announcements include:
✨ I have availability for one out-of-hospital birth (birth center, home birth) from June through the first two weeks of July. That will close birth bookings for the remainder of 2023 and into April 2024.
✨ Beginning April 2024, I will only be booking out-of-hospital births within a one-hour radius from my residence. For the foreseeable future, I will not be booking hospital births or births outside of my new radius EXCEPT for repeat client families.
✨ Availability for Fresh 48/in-home Welcome Baby sessions will remain open through early August 2023 and reopen February 2024.
✨ Fresh 48/Welcome Baby sessions will also now include a legacy box because I think it's THAT important.

I want to clarify that my decision to pull back from hospital births is not at all reflection on my thoughts about families choosing hospital birth. There are 1001 reasons why a family might choose this route, and I do believe that there needs to be providers accompanying those families on that journey - photographers, doulas, childbirth educators, etc... At this time, my work with families in out-of-hospital birth is where my heart resides. With my limited time outside the home, this is where I feel called to serve at this time.

When I came up with Mother Hands, this is the feeling of fullness I imagined. And while I imagined it in the eyes of my families, I think it is only too beautiful that it has become so with my own family. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

12/09/2022

"Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child...I could not get my fill of looking. There should be a song for women to sing at this moment or a prayer to recite.

But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment. Like every mother since the first mother, I was overcome and bereft, exalted and ravaged. I had crossed over from girlhood.

I beheld myself as an infant in my mother's arms, and caught a glimpse of my own death. I wept without knowing whether I rejoiced or mourned. My mother and their mothers were with me as I held my baby."

- Anita Diamant, "The Red Tent"

10/17/2022

10/08/2022

A midwife watches.

A midwife waits.

A midwife guards a family's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual space so that they can feel safe doing what our bodies are intended to do...

Often, with silence.

Always with extensive education and preparedness.

Occasionally, with medical intervention.

But, the family and baby find their way together. First breaths are stolen. The cries bring relief. The warmth of mother and newborn baby sing together a physiological song of connection and love.

And, as the midwife packs her bag and leaves into the night, she prepares to wait yet again.

Gentle Harbor Midwifery