Maternity Self-Portraits | Grand Rapids Birth Photographer

A week and a half ago, my husband Peter helped me document the changes my body has gone through during this pregnancy. We captured these images together at home - in the rooms where I will labor, in the space where I will give birth and our baby will first enter the world, on the bed where the baby and I will learn together how to breastfeed, in the rocking chair where Peter will sooth our babe to sleep.

It's taken me a while to share these images - it turns out that it's far easier to share images of the vulnerable, beautiful, life-changing moments of other people's lives than to share my own.

In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I am sharing these self-portraits that freeze in time the incredible body God has given me to grow this precious and loved baby of ours. I am practicing being in awe every day of how I am fearfully and wonderfully made. It's easy when I feel beautiful and comfortable or feel my baby kick. But I'm also working on feeling the awe in the moments that the discomforts and imperfections of my changing body strike me. Because those moments too are all a part of this process, a part of experiencing new life within me.

Thanks to my sister, Kristin, for giving me this beautiful labor robe. It felt appropriate for it to make its debut for my maternity photographs.