Behind the Lens & Between the Feedings: Dispatch №12

Balancing creative work and motherhood six months in.

Six months ago I wrote the first dispatch in this series from a place of genuine uncertainty. I didn’t know what was coming. I didn’t know how tired I would be, how quickly she would change, or whether I would recognize myself on the other side of it.

Here’s what I know now: I had absolutely no idea what unbroken sleep felt like until I no longer had it. And I had no idea how much I would love watching a small person develop a personality right in front of my eyes. It’s the thinking, the observing, the slow and miraculous process of a human being learning what the world is.

Six months in, we can finally breathe. And I’ve been taking stock of what this chapter has actually looked like.

What I’ve built and what I didn’t expect to

Here is what the last six months have contained, in no particular order: a new content strategy and blog launched from a hospital discharge. A Hamptons wedding shot two months postpartum. An engagement session booked by a couple who found me on ChatGPT. A destination wedding in Italy. A move to Fairfield County, Connecticut. Three engagement shoots. A return to my corporate marketing job.

I am writing that list out for myself as much as for anyone reading it. Because if you had asked me in April whether I would accomplish all of that while keeping a small human alive and somehow sleeping occasionally, I would have laughed.

So much for slowing down.

And yet it still feels like there is more to do. More connections to make in my new home. More CT families to meet, more New England weddings to shoot, more of the business I am quietly building one genuine relationship at a time. I don’t know exactly how it’s all going to come together yet. But I’ve trusted that before and it has always worked out. I trust it now.

What balancing creative work and motherhood actually looks like

The hardest part of the last six months hasn’t been the baby. It’s been figuring out how to show up fully. For her, for my corporate job during the week, and for my photography clients on the weekends, and doing it all without losing pieces of myself in the process.

What I’ve learned is that presence is a practice. When I am with her I want to be entirely with her not mentally editing a gallery or composing a caption. That quality of attention, the same attention I bring to documenting a couple on their wedding day, is something I am learning to bring to my own life too. It turns out being a documentary photographer and being a present mother require exactly the same thing: the ability to be fully in the moment you are actually in.

I’ve also learned that I need to get better at saying no. Not to everything. I don’t want to miss the opportunities that genuinely excite me. But to the gigs that don’t sing to me, the commitments that don’t align, the things I say yes to out of habit rather than genuine enthusiasm. Every no I say to the wrong thing is a yes to more time with her. That’s a trade I’m increasingly willing to make.

What photography means to me now

If anything has surprised me about this chapter, it’s this: I love photography more now than I did before she arrived.

I thought becoming a mom might pull me away from it because it would feel like too much on top of everything else. Instead it has become the thing that energizes me. Getting behind the lens for a client, being trusted with someone’s most important moments, connecting with people and becoming part of their story. That still lights me up completely. If anything it lights me up more, because I understand now in a way I didn’t before what it means for a moment to be irreplaceable.

I want to grow this business. I want her to one day see how I built something real while building a life with her. That’s the story I’m writing now. One dispatch, one session, one genuine connection at a time.

What comes next

I don’t have it all figured out. I’m not sure I ever will and I’ve made my peace with that.

What I do know is that the next chapter is about balance and boundaries. I have to learn to protect my time with her fiercely while still showing up fully for the work I love. It’s about building something in Connecticut while keeping my roots deep in New York. It’s about saying yes to the right things and letting the rest go without guilt.

Six months in, I am not the same person who wrote Dispatch №1. But I am more myself than I have ever been.

More soon. 📸🤍