O'Fallon Illinois and St. Louis Newborn Photographer | Jack | Studio Newborn Session

I will be honest, every single time I book a newborn session, I get so excited. So excited, that I have an internal countdown to that baby’s due date. I feel like I stare at my phone until the second I see that message pop up on my phone, alerting me to the birth of a brand new baby that I get to snuggle and photograph. But this session had me even more excited than usual. Kirsten, from Kirsten Ashley Design and Calligraphy, is the incredibly talented designer of my beautiful brand and website. I have admired Kirsten’s work for many years and I was so honored to have the chance to work with her to design my brand and website in 2019. Little did we know when we were doing my Brand Interview, Kirsten was just a few weeks pregnant and didn’t know yet. Two weeks later, she shared the exciting information and she asked me to be the one to photograph her newborn session.

When Kirsten chose me to photograph this miraculous and beautiful time for her and her husband, Dana, I was reeling with joy. Together, our personalities and visions of light and airy, classic simplicity were merged into this beautiful session starring their precious new baby boy, Jack Harlan. The notification that baby Jack was born came much earlier than expected. Five weeks early to be exact. My heart skipped a beat with excitement knowing that he was healthy and perfect despite being being a premie, but knowing the struggles of preeclampsia that Kirsten was facing made my heart ache. It was a tough couple days but through prayer and love (and lots of praise for modern medicine), Kirsten started getting better as each day went and we were able to plan their newborn session! They wanted to document baby Jack as early as possible because his tininess was a dissipating quicker than they anticipated, and despite a massive snow storm that tried to get in our way, we finally got to have our session together and he was so worth the wait! He was the epitome of newborn perfection; still dawning his soft little newborn fur (or, lanugo but that doesn’t sounds as cute), sleepy cuddliness, and big baby stretches. I am so excited to finally get to share sneak peeks from Jack’s newborn session!