A New Volunteer Opportunity

I was approached yesterday by another photographer in Florida, who has started a bit of a volunteer organization (another one) and was asked if I was interested in being a part of it. Apparently, this young lady went through the crisis pregnancy center when she was pregnant with her child and through them was able to get her feet on a good path and was able to go an to deliver and raise her precious daughter. What she saw there and the people she met made quite and impression on her. And so she is now starting a program with these centers...gathering volunteer photographers who would be willing to go into the hospitals for these moms who ultimately choose life and do a session for them and give them a free 8X10. They are presented with the gift package when they first come into the center...earlier in their pregnancies...in hopes that those moms will try to imagine what that session might look like, or what their babies would look like. And the hope, is that in imagining that, they might just choose to have that baby...to bring that little miracle into this world, instead of abort. I think it's an awesome idea...something neat for a new, insure mother. Something precious to treasure. So...I think that I might join in on this one. I was just thinking yesterday morning how neat it would be to be called into the hospital to do a happy session. When the hospital calls me now, it's not happy. I'm going because someone is losing, or has lost their precious baby. How neat to be called because someone is welcoming one! Actually...what I really, really would like to do, is to be able to photograph a birth experience. Not the birth really itself....but all that goes on around it. Dad comforting mom through labor, watching the clock, the work and exertion of pushing, Dad's face the first time he sees his new child...the tears of joy that inevitably come. Just to be there and document it all....that would be amazing I think. That is truly capturing and documenting one of the most important and amazing moments in a family's lives. Can you imagine what that slide show would look like? I wish I had one! The only pictures we have from my deliveries are just a couple of me laying there waiting for delivery looking like a beached whale. And then the few that Chris took while they weighed and cleaned Max up. Fewer of the other kids! I would love to have the pictures of my day that I have in my mind. But...oh well. We will see how it all pans out. I think it's a neat mission and gift...and I do so love those new mommies and babies!