08/14/2026
This time last year, my husband and I went on our babymoon. August was the month we counted down the days to the due date.
Nothing fit me. I gained about 68 lbs, and even thrifting wasn’t fun. Everything I wore felt like a tent. 🤣 Eric literally had to pull my cowboy boots off my feet at the end of every day. I had so many chins…
Naturally, my desire was to find a place where I could be completely naked in the forest. To have the river carry my body, let the sun soak into my skin.
I wanted to be somewhere wild while I prepared for birth. To sit in the energy of it and let myself be changed by it, the way a river slowly carves the rock. Like my baby was a star picked out of the sky just for us.
And we did find that spot. Far from towns or even ice for our coolers. Not a soul in sight. We had the place completely to ourselves, that is, until I decided to go skinny dipping, of course.
A woman in her mid-70s was hiking in the area and came out to the lookout. I yelled up to her and apologized, thinking about how uncomfortable this world can be with nudity without sexualizing it.
She laughed and said, “Oh dear, what are you sorry for?! This brings me back to when I was pregnant. I would do anything to swim naked in a river like this!”
As a photographer, these are the images I wanted to remember as I moved through this enormous change in my body and my life.
It also changed the way I approach sessions with families and mothers-to-be going through these changes. I want women to deeply connect with how they want to remember this time, not just how they think it’s supposed to look.
I can’t share all the images from this session, but I can share some.
