Tips for making pregnancy portraits you will love

Taking snapshots of your growing belly can be a fun way to document the evolution of your pregnancy, especially during your last trimester. But it can also be tough to capture flattering shots. Here are a few suggestions I have come up with on taking maternity snapshots at home.

While you may not want to hang these homemade photos on your wall, as you would with professional ones, you and your baby can still appreciate them for years to come. More importantly, use the experience of photography to have some fun with your new body. It won't be like this forever. Capture it.

1. Enlist others - It’s almost impossible to take a good photo of your own belly. Ask a friend or your partner to help you, both with taking the photos and coming up with creative ideas for them.

2. Set the stage - Choose your backdrop. If you are at home, find a simple, uncluttered scene, like a wall or a window. Remove distracting elements like plants or other items that won't really add to your photo.

3. Lighting - Make sure you have adequate lighting. If the room is too dark, then your photos might appear out of focus. Using natural light, such as near a window, is ideal, but be careful to avoid direct sunlight because it creates too much contrast. Use the flash only if you must. But I recommend turning it off if you can and use indirect lighting. Silhouettes can also be fun because of the shape of the new mom.

4. Clothing – When choosing what to wear, remember you want to expose your belly. I recommend form-fitting clothes without any obvious branding or patterns. Or, be a little bolder by getting your wedding gown out or pulling out that feather boa that you thought you'd never use.

5. Make-up - When applying make-up, focus on evening out your complexion. Don't go too heavy, because on film everything appears darker. Just make a little effort. Even a small amount of makeup will make a difference.

6. Poses - Experiment with a variety of different poses. Do you practice yoga? Pilates? Try posing with your hands on your belly, but also lift your arms up. Why not include your dog, cat or child in a few frames? Take a risk. Be unique.

7. Photo Composition – This is your final step. Here is where the photograph is made. It is helpful to answer a few questions. What is the primary subject of the photo? Should the focus just on the belly or the whole person? How is the head angled? How does the chin look? Hide those areas that are uncomfortable for the model, such as stretch marks (unless you want those to be part of the composition). Putting some thought into composition means that you will get a much better photograph.

8. Timing - If you are only going to do it once, the I recommend photographing 6-10 weeks before your baby is due. If this is something you really like and want to document your changing belly, then I recommend photographing every four to six weeks. And if you want a fun idea, try doing it in the same place with the same background. you could even put a tape mark where to place your feet.

More fun ideas. Try photographing the belly every month in the same spot and then you can put the images together. If you have an interesting dream during your pregnancy, think about using it as inspiration for a photograph. Are you craving certain foods? Add them into your photo. Are you having issues with your pregnancy, like extreme exhaustion? Photograph it. You are the artist here and now it is your turn to make a photo that not only is of your belly, but I encourage you to make a photo that also imparts some other information about where you are at emotionally, physically, and mentally during your last trimester. The pregnant body is beautiful, capture the memory. You only have nine months.

For more inspiring photographs of pregnancy see my book, Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother, available signed on our site at www.jenniferloomis.com OR on Amazon.

“Finding Hope After Miscarriage”

This is one of the stories that didn't make it into my book

Angy Merola’s first attempt at motherhood resulted in an ectopic pregnancy, discovered only after much damage was done to one of her fallopian tubes. Her chances of becoming pregnant again were now, in theory, cut in half. That’s how she began a four-year journey filled with heartbreak and struggle, including two failed attempts at in-vitro fertilization, until finally, when she least expected it, after two consecutive miscarriages, her son Nico was born.

My husband and I had just gotten off a plane and were about to start a two-week French vacation when I had to go to the hospital. I knew what had happened because it had happened before about eight months earlier around Christmas.

Now it was the end of September. I knew something was wrong during the flight so I had called my doctor during my layover in New York. We immediately went to the local hospital in Burgundy and partly because of the language barrier, it took a little time and a lot of tests before they confirmed what I was trying to tell them, that yes I was pregnant, and yes I had miscarried. It was not the way we imagined starting our vacation.

I just stayed in my hotel room and cried. I wouldn’t leave that room. My husband asked me if I wanted to go home. I told him that I did. He didn’t say anything. By then we were at the beach near Nice and Monaco. He just let me cry, and a little while later he suggested we take a walk on the beach.

Getting out of the hotel room, enjoying where we were, not thinking about everything, just for a little while helped a lot. It made me think leaving might be hasty. I thought, “ok, you can’t let this completely consume you and ruin your entire vacation.” So we stayed.

I’m really glad we did.

Tony and I met in the spring of 1993. I was a sophomore and he was a junior in college. After a week of dating, we both knew we would get married someday. Neither of us questioned the feeling. We got engaged three years later and married two years after that.

We really have a perfect marriage. We love every minute of it. He’s my best friend. We see eye to eye. We travel together. We have two dogs and we both want kids.

For some reason, I told him that I secretly feared that it would not be easy for us to have them. I had no reason to feel that way and I don’t know why I said it. Tony would just say, “Angy don’t talk like that. We’re both healthy. We have nothing to worry about.” He just didn’t want to engage in that conversation.

He was right. I had no reason to worry. It wasn’t because my mom had any trouble getting pregnant. She was 18 when I was born. Maybe it’s because every woman has that fear. I’ve talked to other girlfriends who have thought the same thing. As a woman you feel like you were born to have babies. And if you can’t, you wonder if you can call yourself a true woman, no matter how confident, no matter how strong you are.

It seemed easy at first. I got pregnant the first time we tried. An ectopic pregnancy can happen to anyone at any age. By the time it was discovered, my entire fallopian tube had ruptured. I was bleeding internally. I needed emergency surgery in the middle of the night. They had to remove the entire tube. I knew then my chances of getting pregnant again were cut in half. But my doctor told me I could still get pregnant, that it might just take longer.

We tried for more than three years. The first year, we tried using Clomid, a fertility drug, and once tried artificial insemination. In the second year we discovered I had elevated levels of a hormone that affected my ability to get pregnant. It was as if I had the body of someone who was 41, not 31.

That’s when we tried in-vitro fertilization. We spent about $20,000 on two rounds of in-vitro, six months apart. We were reassured we had a good chance of getting pregnant but both times it failed. And my doctor, to this day, can’t explain it. I learned one factor that can’t be measured is how stress can impact a pregnancy.

A few months after the two rounds of in-vitro failed, I unexpectedly got pregnant on my own in the fall of 2005. I had been going through something of a professional crisis and doing a lot of soul-searching. I was completely focused on my career and completely miserable at the same time. So I decided to quit my job at the end of November. Three days before I was going to give notice, I found out I was pregnant. Now I had even more reason to quit. But our happiness ended quickly. When I was seven weeks pregnant, I miscarried.

This was the darkest part of our entire journey. I felt like I might not be able to bounce back to normal. And, honestly, I never really did go back to the way I was. I became a much more skeptical, serious person who was really struggling with "why me?" each and every day. I really felt like a failure.

I often wished I could let it go. I wondered, “why am I so consumed with getting pregnant? Why couldn’t I just roll with it? Why am I so fixated?” My husband was as supportive as anyone could be. He had reassured me over and over that he married me, and that’s what our relationship was about, that it didn’t really matter to him if we didn’t have kids. He just wanted us to be the way we were before, but of course that was completely impossible. Too many things had happened on that long road.

Nine months later, I somehow got pregnant again without any treatment. And again it ended in miscarriage while we were on vacation. So there we were on the French Riviera. I started to think, “wait a second, we’ve been planning this trip for so long. Is this what I want, to sit here feeling bad? Is that fair to Tony?” At some point it became harder to not leave the room. There were so many things to see and do. So we took a walk on the beach and that helped to snap me out of it. Something about being by the water has always had a special effect on me.

That week, against the odds, I got pregnant for the third time in one year. There was no reason I should have gotten pregnant. I wasn’t even interested in trying again –the thought was too painful. I was scared to death of having another miscarriage. Getting pregnant this time was not joyful – it was petrifying. Once we made it through the first trimester, it set in that we were going to be parents. It was then that I promised myself to enjoy every single second of the pregnancy, even when I felt like a whale, even when I was constantly nauseous, even when I was in 50 hours of labor. We had many close friends and family use the word “miracle” when we told them we were expecting. The pregnancy really did feel miraculous.

If we get the opportunity to have another child, that would be great. If we don’t, that’s fine too. Having Nico brings us both so much joy and happiness. The pregnancy was amazing. But being parents has brought us enough happiness to last the rest of our lives.


For more stories about pregnancy and birth, check out my new book, Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother available-signed- from our website www.jenniferloomis.com or from Amazon

OR

We also have amazing stories on our website under "Our Mothers' Stories." Tell us your story. Please send it to info@jenniferloomis.com

Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother

38

The number of times Margaret Mitchell was rejected before publishing Gone with the Wind.

I clipped this out of Oprah's Magazine about six years ago after I received a few rejection letters from publishers. I stared at it every morning and still stare at it. My book proposal went through three different incarnations over about four or five years, and whenever I was losing hope, I would spy this clipping on my dresser. Now seven years later, my book has been published. Failure is not an option if you don't quit. I didn’t quit, but many times I gave up hope. I wrote three different proposals, had two different agents, and received 37 rejection letters. But I didn't give up and finally I received a call from my agent in March of 2008.

And now as I write this, my book Portraits of Pregnancy:The Birth of a Mother has been released. I wanted to start this blog so that I could chat about all the exciting opportunities that I get, the cool people (celebrities and not) who I get to meet and photograph, and the process of putting out a book. And of course I have been too busy working to get to blogging. But now I finally have some time to sit down and reflect. First of all I should say that this book idea was hatched in my mind in 2003 after an incredible photography session with a mother who finally conceived after 7 miscarriages. She was beautiful, she was gracious, and she was strong. I was going through a difficult breakup at the time (aren't they all difficult), and her words of wisdom carried me through the toughest days. I realized that the inspiration I found through her words, might also inspire others, pregnant or not. That is the beauty of this book. It isn't just for pregnant mothers, it is for all women who need a little inspiration.

The challenges that I now face are many because I have discovered if you have a small publisher, you need to do a lot of promoting of your book yourself. My goal now is to spread the word about this book because I truly do believe that it offers an important voice, a real authentic voice about the transformative journey to becoming a mother. There are more than 50 women in this book who have opened their hearts and shared their personal journeys, often emotional, about their experiences.

This book is for everyone. If you know a pregnant woman who has had a difficult time, tell her about this book. Spread the word. If you know of a pregnant woman who is a single mother, this book is for her, spread the word. If you know of an older mom who has wanted to have a baby for a long time, spread the word. If you know of a happy couple who is beginning their new family, spread the word. If you know of a woman who is struggling with her new body, spread the word. This book can be seen, even though we don’t have a huge marketing budget, even though we don’t have a large publisher. This book will reach people because friends see it and tell their friends. Girl friends read it and think, this will be great for my girlfriend. Husbands will give it to their wives. So please help spread the word. There is a woman somewhere who needs to read this book.



For more stories about pregnancy and birth, check out my new book, Portraits of Pregnancy: The Birth of a Mother available-signed- from our website www.jenniferloomis.com or from Amazon

OR

We also have amazing stories on our website under "Our Mothers' Stories."