Tanya Hladik - doula & photographer

11/25/2025

It's pretty crazy to think that the egg we developed from was held within our mother's womb while we were in our grandmother's womb. When a female fetus is 5 months her ovaries have developed to contain about 7 million oocytes. When we are born our ovaries have all the eggs we will have in our lifetime.

Our grandmothers carried us, within the womb of the baby in their womb.

11/24/2025

One thing that felt so real to me while I was pregnant was how much pregnancy possessed my body and how little say or control I really had in the process. I nourished my body, rested, moved throughout the day, and my body sped me along the path of pregnancy, nourishing my growing baby whether I was thinking about it or not. In ordinary life I give little thought to how much my body does for me with out my own conscious doing, but pregnancy really highlights how amazing it is to inhabit a body that has it's own rhythm, a heart that keeps a constant beat to nourish my body and now another's whether I send it my gratitude or not. I guess, in truth, it's not vain to say we are amazing, it's fact. And the beauty of pregnancy is having that miracle very plain to see every day.

11/06/2025

11/05/2025

A three week old baby in his second womb.

11/04/2025

Every child begins the world again - Henry David Thoreau

watching a baby develop awareness is one of the most magical things in life. Things you’ve taken for granted for being small miracles do not go unmissed by babies.

The sparkle of lights, the ways dogs move, the squirrels. Seeing the world through new eyes is one of the sweetest gifts of being their parent.

11/03/2025

Just a slice of belly bump bliss.

10/04/2025

Such joy.

10/03/2025

The cliches are true. It does pass by in an instant. It’s so slow some days and it seems like an eternity until it’s nap time or bedtime. And then one day you look back and wonder how the hell your baby got so big, scrolling your phone with tears in your eyes as you go through photos of your baby as they lay in the next room, napping.

Motherhood is the weirdest ongoing beautiful heartbreak and joy that fringes the ways it stretches and challenges us.

And nowhere in the dictionary will they supply you with the precise word that describes this type of feeling.

Or maybe that’s just what the word motherhood means.

10/02/2025

One of the other things I love about breastfeeding is that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Sometimes exclusively pumping is what ends up working out. Or combo feeding, or maybe it’s just for the first month and then the plan changes. There are ideals and then there is what happens, especially in a country that has minimal support for new families where the culture is also recovering from the ideas that promoted formula over breast milk. Any amount of breast milk is incredible for your baby. Every drop contains so much nutrition & immune cells & love. You’re amazing, however your feeding journey is unfolding!

10/02/2025

I love how the afternoon light is catching these two, adorned from sweat, amniotic fluid, blood and vernix, glistening with the marks of a birth freshly come

09/25/2025

Ready to book your doula & photography? DM me and we can start chatting!

09/23/2025

One of the things that has changed about me since becoming a mom is the way sentimental stuff gets me, even when I don't know why. Like it could be an Ed Sheeran song that in my previous life I might have thought was cheesey, catches my heartstrings and now I'm crying in the kitchen but I don't know exactly why. It's not as intense as it was earlier on, but still, I'm so much more sappy than I used to be, lol.

Those first hormones of postpartum, even when you know the changes are coming, is such a dramatic shift. I remember feeling in total bliss one day wishing everyone could experience this total feeling of love. And then the next day crying and feeling like I was broken and wondering how in the world I was going to make it through healing from giving birth and keeping this little person alive. Some of the mostly blissful feelings I have ever felt in my life, followed by one of the darkest emotional holes I have ever found myself at the bottom of. And then one day overtime it faded. I'm remember thinking I wished someone had told me, which really, I'd been a doula for 10 years so they had. But the realities of becoming a mama are pretty hard to understand until they become you. It's the craziest wild beautiful ride. And a few tears (or a lot) in the kitchen seem to be a pretty normal part of it.