The very first time I found out a friend was having a baby was on a Tuesday morning, around 8am. We had just stopped for coffee before work and were in the midst of crossing the street when she grabbed my arm and said “Look, I need to tell you something and it feels weird even for me to say it…”

I stopped dead in my tracks, looked over at her while traffic swirled around us and I immediately responded with “Oh my gawd…are you having a baby??”

She laughed at the sound of the words and I immediately burst into tears.

I was so overwhelmed with joyful emotion and so complete fear all at the same time. I can remember calling my husband from work that morning to him the news and part of him could hear the trepidation in my voice.

“Are you okay?” he wondered.

“I’m a little bit scared. I’m so, so happy for her…and I’m scared. I’m scared that things are going to change…that she is going to change.”

That was nearly fourteen years ago now.

And the one thing I’ve learned since that day is that these beautiful little babies do change things. They change our lives and our beings and our worlds. They change all of these things and make them so much better.

Few things have given me more joy over the last decade than to watch the people I love become parents. To watch their hearts expand and love in ways that they didn’t know was possible. And the only thing more amazing than witnessing these changes, is having the privilege of documenting it.

When Doha & Ihsan told me the news that they were expecting, there was no fear. There was no trepidation. There was hesitation over how things might change. There was only an overwhelming gratitude that two of the best people I know were about to become two of the best parents I would know.

And on the afternoon that I showed up to photograph them as a family of three, everything I knew that I was showing up to see the world exactly as it should be.

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