Delivery Room Surprise Results In Best Birth Photo, Ever

A well-timed photo captures Mom’s surprise in the delivery room

No matter how much you plan and prepare, once you’re in labor anything can happen — including finding out that the baby girl you were told you were during your ultrasounds is actually a baby boy.

Koto Nakamura and her husband Sina Niakansafy were thrilled to have their first baby. They were told they were expecting a baby girl, so they planned accordingly and were excited when the day finally came to welcome their daughter to the world. But they were in for a huge surprise in the delivery room. It was then they found out their daughter was actually a son.

Photographer Jes Jackson of Itty Bitty Photography just happened to catch mom’s priceless reaction on film.

The look on her face says it all. It has nothing to do with being disappointed in the sex of your baby. But when you find out whether you’re having a boy or a girl, you start to envision what life will be like with either a son or a daughter. With every kick to your ribs and random craving for beef jerky or chocolate Pop-Tarts you start to assign a personality to your future child.

Imagine planning a nursery, buying clothes and even picking a name for your daughter, and then finding out that she is actually a he. Even though we’ve all heard about a friend of a friend who was told they were having a girl but had a boy or vice versa, you never really think it will happen to you, until it does.

Jackson tells Scary Mommy that in all the births she’s photographed during her career, what happened during Nakamura’s was an absolute first for her.

Before the delivery Jackson, Nakamura and the midwife joked about how wild it would be if the baby turned out to be a boy instead of the girl they were expecting, and the midwife even shared a story of a former client who ended up being surprised by her baby’s gender. Everyone laughed, but no one actually believed it might happened to Nakamura, until the delivery.

“Koto was wrapped up in the delivery of her gorgeous baby and we were all saying, ‘She is beautiful, your baby girl is here!'” explained Jackson, “And the doctor said, ‘Hmmm you might want to double check that.'” At first everyone thought the doctor was joking, and they all laughed. But as the doctor announced that the anticipated baby girl was in fact, a boy, the new mom looked at the camera and made the face any of us would make when getting the shock of the lifetime.

The couple had planned on naming their daughter Hinata, but once the news that they had a son instead sunk in, they set to work choosing a new name, though Jackson says coming up with the name Taiga, which is Japanese for “big and gracious”, took a while.

You can try to prepare yourself for having a baby by taking birthing classes or reading parenting books, but the truth is once you have a baby it’s all about trying to adapt to things as they happen. All of us learn this eventually, but Nakamura and her husband learned it a little sooner than the rest of us — from the very first moment they became parents.

The good news is that not only does this family now have the best birth story ever, they’ve got the pictures to go with it.