Montana Maternity Art

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I choose to create art with my sessions. I really want you to work with me to create art together. What I will not give you is: pastels, mediocre and Jcpenny catalog. Don’t get me wrong I love Jcpennys- but the images that we visualize in the catalog- that’s not art, that’s not me or YOU.

Here is Missoula Montana, we have an amazing backdrop to work with and even the smallest of intimate spaces will hold us, just long enough to capture something truly stunning. I want to adventure and that doesn’t just have to do with outdoors. I do plenty of studio sessions and in- home sessions in Missoula. I want to adventure with you and your skin- your motherhood journey. When we talk and share- when you hear me- my motherhood stories- when we laugh together, the vulnerable slowly appears from behind the foggy veil of everyday. I get to see you, you get to feel me lOVE on you.

Megan Branz- she is a delightful mother of 2 now. Megan is up for anything, trusting me with a road trip, barreling up snowy mountains- then into the birth space- twice now! Megan gave birth at Community Medical Center for her first birth. Her second birth was a homebirth- attended by local licensed homebirth midwife- Ashley Hinton-Sharp. Megan’s births are pure magic to behold. She is strong and confident. Megan has shared her birth experience with me many times- she is empowered by them, ripped open, glowing. Megan caught her own baby boy just a few months ago, gently guiding him out from between her legs, into her arms- gliding back into the birth pool.

Megan was adjusting herself on the rocks when I captured this. It is one of my favorites. Showing her in natural movement. She is human, curved and angled, expecting- beautiful.

Ask the Midwife- Missoula- Birth

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Missoula Homebirth midwifery
Birth Photographer Missoula Montana

Missoula Midwife- Ashley Hinton-Sharp- of Heart- Strong Midwifery

Once the baby is born she is still getting oxygenated blood from the placenta. The beautiful placenta pulses and continues functioning for 5-15 minutes on average giving time for our sweet baby to take her first breath. Once she does that – lung expansion occurs, fluid is pushed out of the lungs. the ductus arteriosis and foramen ovale shut and blood flows through a path of least resistance much like adult hearts. I call the going from fish to frog. This all occurs quite rapidly, the baby turning from blue to pink usually within a breath or two, sometimes longer. Often extremities can remain blue and it is of no concern. The flushing of blue to pink is magical thing to see. It happens as quickly as a rainbow appears or disappears. I will admit I almost never see the actual act of the chameleon like switch as I’m holding the job down on many fronts in this moment but if you are lucky enough to catch it…it’s quite amazing, a miracle. It is usually the moment where my own heart falls in comfort of reassurance, hope and promise.

Missoula Woman- Family & Birth

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Megan found me on Instagram- searching home birth hashtags for Missoula. When we consulted I was blown away by her fierce energy to have the birth experience she felt best for her self and her baby. She was this petite bubbly, messy bunned mama on the screen of my computer bursting with energy and chatter in the most positive light.
She was planning on a home birth. She talked with such conviction, such confidence, self love, reasonable expectations based on thorough birth research- I couldn’t help but be left with a tingling excitement for HER and myself- that I was being invited to witness her birth story.
I get to call Megan my friend. We have had countless birth aware and birth justice conversations over food and coffee dates. We have hiked together, laughed, cried, adventured, created art. I love her little family. I had the honor of photographing her first and now second birth stories. Megan is a lover, a lover of birth and women’s birth rights, lover of hard work, her husband and babies- you can see in her eyes and gorgeous dimpled smile she has a pure joy for life. She is a cup filler. Her children are lucky to have her. Our community is lucky to know her.