I have always loved the fresh 48 hospital pictures that people sometimes take right after the baby is born. If you don’t know, fresh 48 is a photography session taken within the first 48 hours of a baby’s life. A lot of people tend to do these instead of labor photos. They are a little less intrusive, but still capture some of your first moments with your new little one.
I had this dream when Elijah was born, but that of course didn’t work out as we had planned. His hospital “fresh 48” were taken the day we left the NICU when he was already 18 days old. Which we apparently never posted, because I can’t find a post with them.
You can however read about his entrance into this world here.
The NICU itself wasn’t a great place to get pictures. The night before we left, we roomed in with him just down the hall. We took the time before discharge to capture a few memories in our little hospital room. We did the best we could with the little room we had and I will forever cherish these memories of going home with our first boy.
Now, Fitz was a little fighter. He didn’t want to come and was holding on as long as he could. So, we were able to prepare for knowing that there was about a 99%, basically 99.9%, chance that we wouldn’t have to deal with a NICU baby situation again. That meant we could do our fresh 48 session and I had my hospital bag ready and packed for such an occasion.
Now there was a new problem that presented itself. I didn’t want to put Fitz down long enough to get myself ready for a photo shoot! It wasn’t a bad problem, but just one that pushed our little session back to moments before our discharge. Since we were the photographers, we could have had the session whenever we wanted. But we waited and I snuggled. I don’t regret that one bit. I needed those momma and Fitz snuggles since I never got to experience them right after Elijah was born. He was 3 days old before I got to hold him for more than 30 seconds.
Fresh 48
Doing our pictures right before discharge definitely made me feel a little rushed, but I’m so glad we still took the time to make them happen. I love how they turned out. I wish Elijah could have been there, but we didn’t plan well enough to make that happen. I’m thankful for a husband who loves photography as much as I do. I’m thankful for a camera with wifi capabilities to use our iPhone as a remote. And I’m thankful that we took what pictures we did even if I felt rushed and missed taking some shots.
These also include some shots of the day prior when Elijah got to hold mister Fitz for the first time. And a few randoms while we were just hanging out and he looked too cute not to take one.
Photos by us. You can check out more of my work here on my business site for Jessica Powell Photo.
