Octavia’s Home Inspired Couple’s Maternity Session in Southwest Atlanta, GA

Home…so much emotion, sensation, imagery, and memory is surfaced from this single word. Home is the place of safety both externally and internally in which we find solace from the world around us and the freedom to truly be ourselves. Where one can simply exist as a living entity without inhibition of expectation or obligation. Regardless of where we come to call home, “mother” is the first home for us all, and from which we never completely leave. Through a connection deeper than the heart mother and child continue to always coexist beyond distance and time…

For Octavia, home is a place of “comfort, joy, simplicity, and a deep sense of being welcomed.” Having her couples maternity session at home was a way “to capture and celebrate the physical space we call home and all of the love that has survived, and now thrives and lives here.”

Read all about Octavia’s MunaMommy experience in this welcoming couples maternity session.

MunaMommy-to-be: Octavia Raheem
MunaDaddy-to-be: Jemar Raheem
Maternity Session Location: Private Residence, Southwest Atlanta, Georgia

What was the inspiration for your maternity shoot? Our literal home is in Southwest Atlanta (SWATS), a multilayered historical community we have grown to love. We wanted our photo-shoot to be at our house/home in SWATS so that we could capture both the abstract intangibles of home: comfort, joy, simplicity, and a deep sense of being welcomed. We also simply wanted to capture and celebrate the physical space we call home and all of the love that has survived, and now thrives and lives here.

Is this your first pregnancy? This is our first child, but not our first pregnancy. Earlier in our marriage we’d suffered a disheartening miscarriage. This pregnancy reconnected me to a sense of being at home inside of myself after a period of feeling disconnected and lost.

What aspect of motherhood are you looking forward to the most? …snuggling our son, Oyetunde Nasir Raheem, and looking deep into his eyes…watching Oye’s face as his awareness expands and he discovers the world around him. Through his eyes I see everything anew.

Did you have any cravings? Growing up in Gainesville,GA , rarely a Sunday went by when there wasn’t cornbread, greens, and some kind of beans as sides on my plate. I expected to crave ice-cream or pickles, you know the stereotype, but nah, I craved the “good ole” food that reminded me of my childhood. I ate so much cornbread that I started to call my baby cornbread!

What is your advice for expecting mothers/parents? Trust the process. Trust your body. Trust your baby. I asked my husband to share his “advice” and he said, “ take a childbirth education class and please, no matter what kind of birth you envision or want, hire a doula!”

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Photographer: Thu Tran of 2Tphoto