Transition

Hi. To those new here, you may not know that I used to be a birth photographer. No, not newborn photographer. I was in the delivery room, at the foot of the birthing tub, outside the OR doors, with camera in hand. It was the most humbling work I've ever done. And whether you're new here or not, this is probably the first you're hearing about my impending hiatus from said work.

There is a phase in labor called transition. It’s the threshold to birth. The body is working harder than it has before, the mind begins to shift, sometimes unravel a little, sometimes sharpen. It can feel overwhelming, disorienting, powerful. It is also the signal that the big change is here and inevitable.

It’s not the beginning, and it’s not the end. It’s the in-between.

I have spent years sitting quietly in that space with women. Watching it unfold. Feeling the energy in a room change as my clients move through that space. Transition has always felt sacred to me, not because it is easy or beautiful in a conventional way, but because it is so deeply raw. There is no performance left there. Just truth, in whatever form it takes.

Lately, I’ve realized I’m there too.

Not in the same way, not in a physical sense, but in that quieter internal shift. The kind that doesn’t necessarily announce itself, you just realize it's there. Priorities. Energy. The way time feels in your hands. I find myself stepping back, at least for now, from birth photography. Not because it no longer matters to me, but because something in me is asking for space. For breath. For a different rhythm.

It’s strange, stepping away from something that has shaped you so deeply. There’s a muscle memory to it, like I move in a birth space, the way I anticipate moments before they happen, working through the adrenaline and tears. That doesn’t just disappear. It stays in my body. But I'm tired. And I'm changing. And the environment I choose to be in is about to look very different.

There are other things pulling at me right now. The idea of community, closer to the surface. Smaller, everyday stories. The ways people show up for each other. Families in their kitchens, businesses built from someone’s hands and hope, the in-between moments that don’t feel monumental until you look back and realize they were everything.

There are also the more practical edges of this transition. The possibility of moving. The thought of letting go of a home that has held so much life. The slow reshaping of what my work looks like, and how it fits into the life I actually want to live. Not the one that asks me to keep up, produce more, move faster... but the one that lets me be truly present.

I think that’s the part that feels most like transition to me right now. The slowing down. The discomfort of it, even. Because we’re not really taught how to do that. To sit in the middle of change without rushing to define it or to let things be uncertain without immediately trying to fix them into something stable.

In labor, transition doesn’t last forever. It is usually relatively brief, and it builds, crests, and then something shifts again. The body finds its next rhythm and the task at hand changes. There is a kind of clarity that comes, even if it’s still intense.

I don’t know exactly what comes next for me. That part is still forming, but I recognize the feeling. The sense that something is being made, even if I can’t see it yet. I know some day I'll step back into birth. It's too much a part of me. But for now, I sit here at my laptop with my phone volume up as loud as it can go, waiting on the "It's time" text from my last birth client. It's bittersweet.

So for now, I’m here. In the in-between. Letting things change. Trusting that this, too, is part of the process.

Because it always is.