Welcome, Baby Dawson!

Last month Baby Dawson made quite an exciting entrance into the world! His mom, Tiffany, texted me in the morning that she was having light contractions and she'd let me know if they started to progress. I got all of my things ready and drove over to my friend's house to drop off my baby (shout out to my BFF Kathleen who so graciously watches Charlie while I am photographing births!). While I was driving, Tiffany texted that her contractions were about 30 seconds long and 2 minutes apart. Her midwife told her to head to the birth center when her contractions were a minute long. As soon as I got to Kathleen's, I got a frantic call to come to Tiffany's house immediately, because she wasn't going to make it to the birthing center (I later found out that it was Tiffany's mom calling and she thought that I was the midwife- I cannot stress enough how much I am not a midwife).

I started driving to Tiffany's house and thought to myself, this is a crazy turn of events to be driving to someone's house to photograph an unassisted homebirth, Just then I got another call, this time I believe from Tiffany's wife, Mandi, that they were going to try to make it to the birth center and to start driving there, Both Tiffany and I were about 45-60 minutes from the birth center in Statesville, Natural Beginnings. I drove like a crazy person up 77 to get there as fast as I could. As soon as I parked I got another call from Tiffany, this time to tell me that she had her baby in the car on the side of the road! They were only a few exits away from the birth center, so I waited for them there.

There were nurses waiting at the back entrance of the birth center to help Tiffany out of the car and into her room. The pool was filled with warm water for the water birth that was not meant to be. On our way in, Mandi stopped me to take a picture of her hands, which were bloody from just having delivered her baby. Once Tiffany got settled in,Mandi was able to cut the umbilical cord and the midwife assisted in delivering her placenta.The rest of the afternoon, baby Dawson was able to bond with his moms and proud older brother,