NSFW: This post includes topless images from my maternity boudoir photo shoot.
Ten years ago, I did something that felt wildly brave for that version of me. I booked a maternity boudoir shoot.
Booked is a generous word, honestly. I had no real budget. We were broke-broke. Rent-paid-and-pray-about-the-rest broke. A fancy studio? Nope. A hotel suite with fluffy white bedding and pretty light? Not happening. Michael Jones, a local boudoir photographer and a friend of my cousin, offered to do the shoot for free in my tiny run-down apartment in downtown Orlando. I think I handed him a $50 tip and felt very adult about it.
That apartment was… rough. The kind of place where you tried to blur your eyes and call it “cozy.” I can still picture the worn walls, the cramped rooms, that strange mix of old air, cheap candles, and takeout that never really left. Not exactly luxury. Not exactly sexy. And there I was, hugely pregnant, sweating a little, trying to pose like some glowing earth goddess, fully convinced I looked like a whale in lip gloss.
I remember feeling awkward at first. Where do you put your hands? Your face? Your giant belly? Every pose felt silly for a minute. Then something shifted. Michael made me feel comfortable, which mattered more than any velvet couch or silk robe ever could. I stopped thinking so hard. I laughed. I leaned into it. I let myself be seen.
Then the photos came back.
Y’all, I cried.
Not the cute movie tear either. Real tears. Puffy ones. I looked at those photos and saw a woman I did not expect to see. Soft, strong, sexy, vulnerable. Beautiful. Me. The apartment still looked like the apartment, sadly. No magical editing was going to turn that place into a dreamy penthouse. Yet none of that mattered the second I saw myself through a kinder lens.
After I gave birth, my whole view of those images changed. I learned I would never be able to carry another baby. I have a bad gene that causes blood clots, and after delivery I nearly died from a liver blood clot. So those photos are not just pretty pictures from a scrappy chapter of life. They hold a version of me I can never get back.
Funny how a broken-down apartment gave me one of the most precious things I own. Life is weird like that. Messy room, cheap tip, swollen ankles, shaky confidence—and somehow, there it is. Proof that beauty can show up long before you feel ready for it.
These days, Michael is a big shot boudoir photographer here in Orlando. I highly recommend him if you want super sexy photos. Check out his website: Sin Boudoir
