I hesitate to try and put into words the beauty of these two’s entrance into the world. It all starts with an incredible single mother and her son, Vanessa & Jacob. They lived a beautiful and full life together sharing love with everyone who crossed their path. Throughout his entire life since the age of 3 Jacob continually longed for and wished for twin sisters. He asked for them as a little boy and lovingly joked about them as he got older but he never gave up on the wish.
Last summer Vanessa fell in love. Every person who encountered Vanessa and her Christopher together just knew. There had never been two people who were so instantly sure of each other who so perfectly complemented one another. From the outside it may have looked like a whirlwind romance but every single person close to them knew they simply had both come home. They were meant to be and somehow had always been.
A few months later they were married surrounded by dear friends and a warm autumn wind. And SURPRISE! Vanessa was pregnant with twins.
This birth story is a love story. It is a story of a family found and born. The story of trust and surrender. Esme and Camille came into this world to create the perfect family of 5 and to make a certain young boy’s lifelong dream come true.
(One of my favorite things I heard Vanessa say when she was greeting Jacob in recovery after the cesarean was, “Ok you can keep manifesting all you want just please now keep your manifestations out of my reproductive organs!”)
It was an honor to witness and support this precious family as they found love and joy in every step along the way - from an unexpected cesarean just shy of 35 weeks, postpartum preeclampsia, and a 12 day NICU stay. My hope is that the magic of this family can be glimpsed through these photographs. Below you will see Vanessa, Christopher, and Jacob savoring their last morning as three, Esme & Camille’s cesarean birth, and their first time latching and doing skin to skin the day after their delivery.
