Longer Maternity Leaves Make Room for More Newborn Photography!

Today we welcomed Jacob into the studio!  A wonderful baby boy who didn’t cry once!  He did however spend some time ‘growling’.  Yes, growling!  It was so cute…. I’m not sure what kind of visions were running through his little head but his parents and I definitely got a good laugh out of it.

Mom was early so I shifted my schedule around and was able to fit Jacob’s newborn shoot in right at seven days old.  Luckily, Mom has thirteen weeks off for maternity leave so she’ll get to have plenty of quality of mommy time and maybe even have time to work on getting the growling under control.  Interestingly, twelve weeks of maternity leave is actually the law and it went into affect in 1993 with the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.  The United States is also one of the only developed countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave.  Let’s go Biden, make it happen!

More and more of the mothers that come to Beverly Hall Photography are taking longer maternity leaves to stay home with their new babies.  That’s probably a good thing because longer maternity leaves are associated with reductions in post-neonatal and child mortality.  The most important aspect of mothering that is disrupted with shorter maternity leaves is breast feeding.  Professionals recommend six months of consistent and continuous breast feeding which employment obviously hinders.

Another interesting fact is that the likelihood of postpartum depression is lessened with longer maternity leaves.  So I guess that mommy-baby bonding time is important after all!  But we can’t forget about Dad…. it’s recently been documented that postpartum depression can also result from the father not taking enough or any paternal leave at all.  Somehow though I think that might now be at the top of Dad’s list.

In essence, it’s sounding like the safest, and best solution (for Mom) is for Mom, Dad, and new baby is to take a three month home vacation right after delivery!  That way there’s plenty of time for parents to bring their little ones to me for their first pictures ever!  Newborn photography is something you can only do once!  Of course this all only pertains to  when AFTER Covid is over because right now I think everyone is ready to Get  Out  Of  The  House!