I also wanted to try something new, and Julie agreed to be my guinea pig. I brought along a digital voice recorder and asked her to talk about how she felt about becoming a mom, how she felt like her life had changed with Vika’s birth, what she wanted to remember about this time. Then I synced the voice recording with the slideshow of images from her shoot. The video is about 3 1/2 minutes long.

This is Vika (Vee-ka, the Russian nickname for Victoria, which is her full name). She was born with a birth defect where her colon had not connected to her anus. So she has had to go through a few surgeries so far to correct this, starting with a colostomy–a rerouting of the colon to connect it with a hole in the abdomen wall, where they attach a bag that collects poop. You can see the bag in one of the images. After a couple more surgeries in which they will reconstruct her anus and connect the colon, the bag will be removed and she’ll be completely normal. Julie talks a little about one of the surgeries in the video.