Jupiter Home Birth: First-Time Mom's Dream Realized in Converted School Bus

🚌 SCHOOL BUS CONVERTED HOUSE 🚌

HOME BIRTH

in Jupiter, Florida

I get asked OFTEN what my favorite birth ever was.

While I don't have a favorite, because I have attended a lot of births I really really loved for many different reasons, I am going to start sharing a few of my 'coolest' births that instantly come to mind starting with this one!

First time mama lives in a school bus converted home, when I arrived at her birth, I saw immediately how much heart and time they put into creating a loving home.

When she first hired me to photograph her baby's home birth, I said I would do whatever I could to make it, despite it being a drive for me.

Its really hard for me to choose only 10 of my favorite photos from Katie's home birth, but I did my best narrowing them down for instagram. While on this blog post, I included my favorite 70 birth photos from Katie’s home birth photo gallery of 229!

My Favorite things about this home birth as a Birth Photographer in South Florida:

1. I think this will always be my fav thing every time you ask, I was fed :) One of my love languages is when someone cooks or buys food for me, whether a meal or a snack or a coffee. One of the yummy things I had while at this birth were donuts from Jupiter Donuts. And while memory is escaping me, I am pretty sure I ate most of them lol

2. The Lighting during certain parts of Katie’s labor was the most beautiful lighting I have ever had the honor of capturing in all ten years of my career as a Birth Photographer, particularly because of the window coverings during the highest point of the sun filtered the most magical tones and shadows.

3. Katie didn’t have any off limits photos, and she also didn’t have any expectations. If you’re a photographer, you know there are clients who you try to meet their very specific expectations, and others who trust you 100% to capture their birth through your lens and Katie was the latter.

4. Katie’s labor ended up being one of the coolest births I had ever photographed. Between the location she lives in, her home being a school bus converted house, it being a home birth, her being a first time mom, it was truly an experience of a life time for me.

As with all things, every yin has a yang, and My Least Favorite things about this experience as a Birth Photographer in South Florida:

1. I don’t think I ever had to worry about mosquitoes at work before. Yes, I live in South Florida so we always have mosquitoes, and while I am use to it, I never thought I’d have to swat at mosquitoes for hours and hours and use endless amounts of bug repellant and I don’t think that was my cup of tea (while working).

2. I aim to typically arrive at births during the active labor stage. While if I had done this at Katie’s birth, I would have missed at least 30-40% of the beautiful photos at the beginning of this gallery, so I am glad I did not miss them, it was definitely rough being at this birth for 24 hours. Because it was so far, I did not want to leave. But there was no signal on my phone for most of the birth, and ask any birth photographer in the world, you are not photographing for 24 hours if you’re at a 24 hour long birth. Also, because we did a lot of waiting in between photographing new parts of Katie’s story, I also had to do a lot of sitting around, and my back was killing me for such a long time.

3. Because Katie and Kevin were still working on their house, their bathroom wasn’t complete. So the three times I did use their bathroom, people had to hold up a towel in front of me for privacy, and I did not enjoy that at all and would like to avoid that experience while at work in the future if at all possible, lol

I was asked if I would ever do a home birth in a school bus converted house again, and my answer is, “maybe”

A lot would depend on who the birthing mom is, if this is her first, probably not in order to avoid another long birth, though I have absolutely zero regrets for capturing the most magical and amazing birth for Katie and Kevin, and I would do their birth again and again if I went back in time. It was meant to be.

Other factors that would impact my decision would be: how far away am I going? I am not sure if I would go this far again for a first time mom due to the distance, after being awake for a very long time, I had to call my husband to be on the phone with me on the drive home, as I did not want to fall asleep behind the wheel and that is one thing that makes long births, regardless of where they are, dangerous for the birth workers attending them, and why I am fully behind only attending once my client is in active labor.

And you can’t really control if there is going to be wifi / signal in the area you are going whether its a home birth or a hospital birth, but if I knew ahead of time that I am going to a first time mom’s birth, where there is no signal and it is not a hospital where you can connect to wifi, and there isn’t quick access to a coffee shop, that may affect my decision as well

Do you have a favorite photo of the collection?