Guest post by Andrew Shaw
I can distinctly remember having our preemie twins in a photoshoot at the Mudpies studio, which, somehow, was five years ago. Or yesterday. It all seems the same.
My wife and I fell in love with the work of the Mudpies team that we saw adorning the walls inside Wellspan York Hospital near the NICU. When we found out they can expertly handle premature babies, we were sold.
At that point, with so much uncertainty in those early days of our second and third kids (we had a 2-year-old son as well), we would take any certainty we could get.
The girls ended up looking absolutely perfect, as did our son with a bashful smile as he was placed near them. My wife looked gorgeous holding them, too.
In the years since, we’ve done many Mudpies shoots, with their work now adorning our own walls. Newborns becoming infants. Infants becoming (loud) toddlers. Toddlers becoming… well some days it seems like teenagers but the calendar says they are 5, 5, and almost 7.
I’ve grown a lot, too, since those early days. I learned how much pressure is on a mom to do everything for everyone. And how expectations vary so much for dads — it was a surprise to see a dad in the NICU, for instance.
That all helped inspire me to write The New Mom’s Guide to New Dads, my effort to help mothers understand what it’s like to be that anxious, confused new father who is trying to pretend he has it together. I tell my own stories of #dadlife, tap into expert advice, and mostly help new moms get into the mentality of a new dad so they can have better conversations and a better, shared empathy for each other.
I don’t know what life will bring me next as a dad. Who knows what our next portrait will be like — what stories we’ll have shared since the last one. But I do know we are all better when we improve our communication and understand that there’s a lot more that goes into parenting than the perfect Instagram shot or the memorable canvas that hands on a wall. All of the life that happens in between those moments — that’s what makes those picture-perfect moments worth saving.
