I asked for my first birth session as a DFW birth photographer at a jump park. I was terrified. She said yes. And nothing has been the same since.
There is a moment I think about a lot.
I am sitting on the floor of a bedroom in Fort Worth. The lights are low. There is soft music playing from somewhere I can’t see. A woman is laboring on the bed in front of me, on all fours, completely inside herself — calm and focused and powerful in a way I did not know a human being could be during one of the most intense things a body can do.
A three-year-old has climbed into my lap and stayed there. My camera is gripped tightly in my hands, heart somewhere in my throat. The only thought running through my mind is: I cannot believe I almost didn’t ask.
Before I Was a DFW Birth Photographer, I Almost Fainted at a Birth
Let me back up.
The first birth I ever attended, I was not the photographer. I was there as support for my best friend. I was excited and ready, thinking I knew exactly what I was walking into.
What I did not know — and what nobody warned me about — was the placenta.
When my best friend started pushing it out after delivery, I was gone. Out the door. Sliding down the wall in the hospital hallway while the doctor, apparently, yelled to a nurse to go check on me.
Sitting on the floor of that hallway for a while, it felt impossible that this version of me would go on to become a birth photographer.
Sharing this story matters because I was not someone born fearless about birth. Neither a midwife, a doula, nor a labor nurse, I was simply a mom who had delivered five babies of her own — all happily at the hospital, all with an epidural. To be completely honest, I once had to be peeled off a linoleum floor because nobody explained that birth has a second act.
Growth is real. And sometimes it starts on a hospital floor.
The Jump Park Ask
A few years after the hallway incident, my daughters were in preschool.
One of the women who worked there — Paige — was pregnant. However, even though I knew she was planning a home birth, I was still turning the idea of birth photography over quietly, unsure if I was brave enough to actually pursue it. Consequently, while the photographer and the Nikon were entirely ready, what I completely lacked was a single birth session on my portfolio.
One afternoon we were all at a jump park together — a chaotic, loud, bouncy-house situation with small children running in every direction — and I decided it was now or never.
I pulled Paige aside. I was so nervous I can barely remember what I said. Something like:
“I know you’re planning a home birth. Have you ever thought about having a birth photographer? I’m trying to get started, and if I gave you a really good deal — would you be willing to have me there?”
She looked at me. She smiled.
She said yes.
She went home, talked to her husband, and came back with a yes from him too. The baby was going to be a surprise. They had two little girls. The plan was for the girls to go to their grandparents’ house while Paige labored, and I would come and document their home birth.
I had never been to a home birth.
I had never photographed a birth at all.
I said I would be there.
Walking Into Paige’s Home Birth
I will be honest with you about what I expected. In fact, chaos, screaming, and an overwhelming, messy environment were exactly what I anticipated. Furthermore, having raised five kids, the sound of a body under pressure was entirely familiar to me. Therefore, bracing myself at the door, I took a deep breath and walked in.
The room was the quietest place I had ever been in.
Paige was laboring in the tub when I arrived. Soft music. Dim light. Her midwife, Susan Taylor, watching her with the kind of calm, focused attention that only comes from years of knowing exactly what you’re looking at.
The girls didn’t end up going to their grandparents. They stayed. I was nervous about that — I wasn’t sure what to expect with children present — but it turned out to be one of the most beautiful parts of the whole day.
I sat down on the floor next to the bed. Got my camera ready. And I just watched.
Paige labored in near silence. I have had five babies. I know that labor is not quiet for most people. But Paige was somewhere deep inside herself, doing this thing with a kind of grace that I didn’t have words for.
At one point I leaned over and told her that her house was quieter right now than mine is at seven in the morning.
She almost laughed.
She was in active labor.
The Midwife, the Bed, and What Happened Next
Susan watched Paige in the tub for a while and then made a call.
“I think you need to get out. I think you’ll progress better on all fours.”
Paige was reluctant. She was comfortable. She didn’t want to move.
Susan was gentle and firm. “I think you need to do this.”
Paige got out of the tub. Got on the bed. Susan repositioned her leg — one specific adjustment, made with the quiet confidence of someone who has done this hundreds of times — and that baby came fast.
Faster than any of us expected.
And when he arrived, he was still inside his sack of waters.
He was born en caul.
Both little fists tucked up at his cheeks. The amniotic membrane still intact around him. It is one of the rarest things that can happen at a birth — it occurs in less than 1 in 80,000 deliveries. Some cultures have considered it a sign of great fortune for centuries. Sailors once believed that a caul — the dried membrane — would protect them from drowning.
None of that history mattered in the moment. Instead, there was just the sheer awe of witnessing something I had never seen before and might never see again.
With a camera in my hands and Paige’s three-year-old daughter sitting quietly in my lap, the realization hit me: I was completely, utterly hooked.
What That Day Taught Me About Birth Photography
I left Paige’s house that afternoon different than I arrived.
I had walked in nervous and unsure, braced for something difficult. I walked out knowing — in that clear, certain way that you just know things sometimes — that this was the work I was supposed to be doing.
Here is what I learned that day, and what has stayed true in every birth session I have photographed since:
- Birth is not what we think it is. We carry these images of birth from movies and television — screaming, rushing, fluorescent lights, monitors beeping. And birth can look like that. But it can also look like a dim room, a quiet woman, a midwife who knows exactly what she’s doing, and a baby arriving into a space full of love and intention.
- The photographer’s job is not to direct. It is to witness. I did not move Paige. I did not pose anyone. I sat on the floor with a three-year-old in my lap and I kept my camera ready and I stayed out of the way. The images that came from that day were real because everything in them was real.
- The people who trust you with this deserve everything you have. Paige invited me — a nervous woman she knew from the preschool parking lot — into the most sacred moment of her family’s life. That is not a small thing. It has never felt like a small thing. Every family that invites me into their birth is extending a trust that I do not take lightly.
Why I’ve Never Looked Back as DFW Birth Photographer
I have been a DFW birth photographer since that afternoon in Page’s bedroom. Since then, I have photographed hospital births, home births, and birth center sessions alike. Whether documenting a birth that went exactly as planned or one that turned on a dime, I have frequently cried in my car afterward — the good kind of crying, the kind that comes from being allowed inside something holy.
Of course, I have five kids of my own, so my house is loud, full, and beautifully chaotic. Nevertheless, the rooms where I work — the spaces where these brand new babies arrive — always seem to find their way to absolute quiet.
To this day, I still think about Page often. In addition, I think about Susan with DFW Midwife Collective and that three-year-old sitting in my lap, completely unbothered, watching her brother come into the world.
I think about how close I came to not asking.
If you’re expecting a baby in the DFW area and you’re thinking about having your birth documented — I would love to talk. I serve families throughout Fort Worth, Dallas, Grapevine, Mansfield, Keller, Southlake, and surrounding communities.
- Reach out here to check my availability and learn more about birth sessions with Poppy + Blue.
- And if you want to go deeper on what home birth photography actually looks like — the light, the space, the midwife, and what makes it different from a hospital birth — I wrote about it here: DFW Home Birth Photographer: An Honest Take
Emily King is a birth, Fresh 48, newborn, and family photographer based in Fort Worth, Texas, serving families throughout the DFW area. She documents birth in a real, unposed, documentary style — the kind that lets you be fully present while she takes care of remembering.
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