This blog post was written by Christina, the beautiful mother of Ruby Charlotte. Understanding the background of this family's journey and their story literally makes such an impact on these images taken from the newborn session. These are her words. This is their story.

Grab some tissues...

"I always knew I wanted to be a mom. In high school, when they make you take the aptitude tests, the only career I wanted to see in the results was “mom.” As an only child, I have such a close relationship with my mom that I couldn’t think of anything better than being a mother myself someday.

When I met my husband and we fell in love, I immediately started envisioning a happy future filled with children. After we got married, we took our time travelling, spending time with friends, and trying new restaurants – we figured we should enjoy this time as a couple before the kids came along. Being able to have a child was a certainty in my mind – something we planned on rather than wondered about. Looking back, I feel silly having assumed it would be easy for us to start a family.

Three years after we got married, I found out I was pregnant – just as we had planned. Shortly after, we found ourselves in the ER with the news that it was an ectopic pregnancy – I needed emergency surgery and came close to losing my life, though all I could think about was that we had lost our baby.

With that loss, so many hopes and dreams died along with our beloved baby. The future I had been so sure of suddenly slipped away and was replaced with sadness, fear, and uncertainty. We spent the next two years dealing with different doctors and specialists, testing, infertility, several rounds of in vitro fertilization, and two more miscarriages. After my father passed away, we were so heartbroken that we decided to stop trying for a while. Our life, marriage, and daily routine had become so much about infertility and loss that it had come to define me as a person.

We began living again, trying to find happiness in the things we had once enjoyed. We planned a big trip to Europe, and a week before we were to leave, we found out very unexpectedly that I was pregnant! It was the biggest shock of our lives. The years of loss had robbed me of the ability to be excited, but after time went on and baby proved to be healthy, eventually I was able to envision that wonderful future again of being a mom.

Three years to the day from when we lost our first baby, we left the same hospital with our miracle baby girl, Ruby Charlotte, and life will never be the same.

Our journey to become parents has been so difficult and challenging, but it brought us to our beautiful rainbow baby. For those who haven’t heard that term, a rainbow baby is a baby born after loss. Just as a rainbow can appear after the harshest storm, our beautiful baby was born out of the darkness we had gone through.

As I look at the photos taken by Christina Michelle, I feel like our journey has come full circle, and she has beautifully captured the love and emotion we feel for our daughter. I know that there are so many women and couples out there facing infertility, and I want them to know that miracles truly do happen. I get to look into the face of mine every day, and these beautiful photos reflect that."

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"I always knew I wanted to be a mom"

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Christina is a photographer based in Naperville, serving clients in the Chicagoland area and is available for destination sessions. Focusing primarily on Children, newborns, and families portraits sessions- she enjoys lifestyle sessions, home-based sessions, for inside and the world, during the golden hour (the hour and half before sunset), for outside sessions. To discuss and schedule your photography session, please email: christina@christinamichellephotography.com or call (773)680-9369