Behind the Lens & Between the Feedings: Dispatch №3

On slowing down when that's never really been your thing

I am not someone who stops.

Between corporate marketing jobs I never took time off. I'd spend the weekend on a photo shoot and walk into my first day of a new role on Monday morning like nothing happened. I like having a project, a plan, something in motion. It's just how I'm wired.

Case in point: I spent two weeks before giving birth building out a whole new photo website on a new platform, starting this blog, and building an entire content strategy. It launched the day I got home from the hospital. Very on brand. When something is in progress, I need to see it through. So you can imagine how maternity leave was going…

The thing I didn't expect

Stepping back from client work was harder than I anticipated in one specific way. Six months before my due date I had to tell a couple I could no longer photograph their wedding. I was going to be giving birth. It felt like a missed opportunity and a crack in the momentum I'd spent years building.

And then, pretty quickly, it didn't. Because in the grand scheme of a photography business and a life, one wedding is not a make or break moment. There will be more weddings. Right now the only thing that actually matters is the health of my daughter. That realization landed more easily than I expected and that alone told me something.

Week three

By week three something had to change. Not because anything was wrong. My daughter was calm, she was happy, she was healthy. But I was crying anyway. The exhaustion had compounded in a way I hadn't accounted for because I hadn't been sleeping. And I hadn't been sleeping because somewhere in my wiring, rest still felt like falling behind.

I had to learn that going back to sleep after the 7:30am feeding while she slept wasn't missing out on anything. It was how I was going to show up for her later that day. A day that might not start until 10am is still a full, worthwhile, beautiful day. That sounds obvious written out. It was not obvious at 3am.

What slowing down is actually revealing

Here's what I didn't expect: that intentional slowness would feel less like doing less and more like finally paying attention. When I'm not mentally running through a to-do list, I notice things. The way she settles into my shoulder. The specific quiet of a Tuesday morning with nowhere to be. The tiny victories — a good feeding, an actual nap, a moment where everything is still and calm and completely enough — that would have slipped right past me if I'd been busy looking for what's next.

This is, I realize, exactly what I try to give my clients when I photograph them. The permission to be present. To stop performing and just exist in a moment while someone quietly documents it. Turns out I needed a little of that myself.

More soon. 📸🤍