Photographing the Hope & Joy of a Rainbow Baby

On March 5th, 2016, I received an email that every maternity & newborn photographer dreads. Courtney*, one of my former maternity and newborn clients, who was expecting to have a maternity session for her second baby the next afternoon, went into labor overnight. The doctors were unable to detect her baby’s heartbeat.

Whew, I had to start a new paragraph because typing that brought on tears just like five years ago when I sat reading and re-reading her email in shock. I imagined her typing those words to me with her own tears running down her face, feeling overwhelming, inconsolable, and unbearable loss and helplessness.

Okay, take three. Only a few weeks later, I had the honor of retouching the photos that a volunteer captured of her beautiful baby girl, Hadley, bringing on fresh tears as I witnessed their deep sorrow as they held their angel close to their chests.

OMG, I can do this!! Let’s fast-forward to November of 2020. Yes, six months into COVID, the beginning of the biggest spike in cases to date. We were all flush with anxiety of whether to take chances with seeing family for the holidays, trying to grant our children some sense or normality in a heartbreaking year. Every day was stressful; the evening news didn’t help. I opened my email two days before Thanksgiving, and was greeted by THE VERY BEST NEWS OF 2020! After years of trying, Courtney was finally pregnant again with her rainbow baby and wanted to book maternity and newborn sessions! Wait a sec, more tears…

So despite having taken off the winter to work on a novel, and already being fully booked for her May due date, I held true to the promise I made to her five years ago, and found a way to fit her in. (For those of you on my waitlist, please don’t get mad. I have to set limits to the number of sessions I schedule, or work takes over my life… but that’s another blog post entirely).

Her maternity session was last week! You can’t imagine the smiles on our faces when she pulled up to my house, and it was incredible seeing her seven-year-old son again, the last time was at his newborn session!

Can’t you see the happiness? I love that they included their Hadley doll in this session, a visual representation of their family’s angel.

The above studio portraits are a recreation of the ones we took seven years ago, when she was pregnant with her son. But the tattoo, bearing the name Hadley, is a fresh addition.

I will update this post in May with their newborn portraits when her baby arrives, but I wanted to share these portraits of another rainbow baby I photographed recently. A rainbow baby is one who arrives after a miscarriage or many heartbreaking years of trying to conceive. This family had gone through years of fertility treatments, then COVID hit, and they got pregnant the very first month, when the clinic was closed.

I hope these images bring you as much joy as they do me. We all need to find our rainbow moments during these tough times. So when you see one, hold onto it, and let it fill you with the promise of better days to come. They will come, maybe not in the way you imagine or expect, but you mustn’t give up hope.

UPDATE: Here are the photos of Courtney’s rainbow baby, Gatlin! He’s SO cute!

*Courtney gave me permission to use her and Hadley’s names for this post.

Check out more of my newborn photography in my portfolio and on my Pinterest board.