Wonderfully Made Photography by Rebekah

02/02/2025

Nebraska women should be able to choose to birth wherever they want and have the necessary medical professionals with them. As you’ll read here, Nebraska is the only state where it’s illegal for Certified Nurse Midwives to attend home births. Nebraska needs to do better!!!

🤰Nebraska Women Deserve Safe Birth Options🤰🏿

Did you know that in Nebraska, homebirth is legal but having a midwife assist you is not?

Nebraska is the 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 state where Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNMs) are banned from attending homebirths. It is actually a felony for a CNM to provide care at home, even though they are highly trained medical professionals. Meanwhile, 49 other states allow CNMs, Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs), or both to provide regulated homebirth care.

Here’s the reality: 98% of CNMs practice in hospitals, and that will continue to be the primary place of birth. Legalizing homebirth midwifery isn’t about shifting births away from hospitals. It is about ensuring that the families who 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 homebirth have access to qualified, regulated midwives and seamless hospital transfers when needed.

More Nebraska families are choosing homebirth than ever before, but without legal options, an underground system of birth attendants has emerged. Some are highly trained, but others have no formal training, leaving women vulnerable and without safe, integrated care. Nebraska's answer thus far has been to prosecute homebirth attendants. Despite the massive amount of taxpayer dollars that are spent on these legal costs, this plan does not stop homebirth, and continues to leave Nebraska families vulnerable.

This isn’t about whether you would choose homebirth. It is about making sure that those who do have access to skilled, regulated providers.

This is why we are asking for support for LB676, a bill that will modernize CNM statutes and expand our ability to serve families in Nebraska, including the ability for CNMs to provide homebirth services. It is also why we are supporting LB374, which will license CPMs in Nebraska.

It is time to fix this. Let's bring Nebraska in line with the rest of the country and make homebirth safer for everyone.

04/27/2024

I am so ridiculously blessed!!! 🧡 Is anyone in the area interested?? Yes, I’m still doing photography!! 🧡

04/09/2024

Is anyone currently expecting? Do you know someone who is? I’m offering a birth portfolio building discount and I’d love to offer that to you or someone you know!! ❤️

02/06/2024

Kendra - Senior 2024 - North Bend Central High School

I'm going to be real with ya'll. Sometime in 2022 (or 2021?), my oldest daughter, Alexis, and I were eating dinner at Leroy's Steakhouse here in North Bend. Because of my husband leaving me and me not having my younger children, I was having a particular emotional evening - including while at the restaurant. This young lady was working that evening and happened to be our waitress. After giving me a few hugs that evening, I wrote on my ticket my phone number, thanked her for her empathy, and asked if she would want to babysit my children sometimes. Maybe 30 minutes later, I received a text from Kendra. As a single mom of five daughters, I have really enjoyed talking to Kendra and getting to know her. My children adore her, and I think she has a heart of gold.

As for this photo (more will be uploaded later), it just makes my heart happy. The pure joy in her face, the smile. That is what makes Kendra Kendra. I think she's going to do great things in life. But it's her empathy and pure kindness that I have really admired about her.

11/09/2023

Edit: I am updating to include this mommas gofund me link. In January, I will be documenting the arrival of her baby girls birth. I am a birth doula/photographer and this is the second birth I will be documenting for her.
If you would like to donate or help her finish paying for Jaden’s headstone, I would be so appreciative. Marissa is a single momma who raises her children to be kind and respectful, and they are so full of compliments! ❤️ Please consider helping making this final resting place a healing place for Marissa.
She sits out at his gravesite weekly.

https://gofund.me/1861b92b

Last night I had a beautiful session with this momma and her babies and little girl on the way. I was home and chilling out scrolling like we do and I had seen that she had posted a memory from an exact year ago yesterday. It was her family Christmas Mini session I had done. Last year at the end of the year my heart was still really heavy with a lot of raw grief for so many. I had just taken the Bennett family Christmas photos. The first photos without their son Wayden. My heart still hurts for them.

When Marissa and her family came in I had them do all the poses I normally do and groupings and mom and girls and this and that and I said something like Ok Jaden, now it's your turn to let momma love on you. And of course every 13 year old boy hates photos, but I told him, someday you will want these photos with your momma.

Never in a million years would I think that I would know yet another family who has lost their young son. I didn't set this pose up thinking that I would even try a photo like this.

Marissa had brought a photo of Jaden and we had done a few with the photo. After seeing her memory post last night, I knew I had other photos of Jaden that I didn't send out the first gallery last year. In that gallery was a photo of Jaden and mom looking and laughing at each other. How perfect. How simply beautiful, yet gut-wrenching.

PLEASE take the photos. Take time to make the sessions. Invest in good photographers that will capture moments of laughter and moments of quiet.

08/02/2023

I’ve been asked why I want to specialize in birth photography when there are so many other genres of photography from which I could choose - children/families, seniors, headshots, engagements/weddings, maternity, food, landscapes, etc. Literally so many options.

No other event shows the courage and strength of another human like the birth of a baby. Out of my five births (2, 3, and 5), three of them were drug-free. I had no pain medicine. There is nothing more difficult I have done. These births made me feel beautiful, tough, strong. One of my births (4), was an emergency c-section. I don’t have any memories of her birth. Haha. I was awake, my cord pr*****ed, I was asleep and there my baby was when I woke up. The pain with my recovery was excruciating. With my oldest daughter, I had an epidural, pushed for 1.5 hours, and there she was.

With my oldest, I had no support except from my nurses. My daughter’s father was less than helpful. My younger four I had the support of my now-ex-husband. But I have no visual memories from their births. Nothing to remind me how tough I was (except for my daughters themselves). Nothing to show me #4’s birth, since I was asleep.

I love babies. I loved the baby stage of my daughters. I wish I could go back and do the baby stage all over again. (I could be crazy!)

I love birth. Every kind. Women are so strong. And it’s that strength that I want to capture in my photography.

So why birth photography? Because women are strong and birth is beautiful. There’s really nothing else to it.

❤️

08/01/2023

$500 for birth photography!! ❤️

05/15/2023

Something exciting is coming!!! 🎉🎉🎉