Kidachrome

As my brain swirls with the prospect of making and raising a child and the financing of said making and raising, one question keeps nagging at me.  Forget the reproduction costs, forget the pregnancy and delivery costs, forget the clothing and feeding and educating and entertaining and healing and mending costs and riddle me this:

How on earth will I afford all the professional photo shoots??!!

Have you noticed this?  Every time I turn around, one of my friends is having professional photos taken and then posting them on Facebook.

There are the pregnancy announcement photos.  

The pregnancy photos.

The shortly-after-birth photos (not to be confused with afterbirth photos; that's something else entirely. Ick.  Yet, a woman in Nebraska just thought, "Hmm...a professional photo shoot of my afterbirth would look GREAT in a scrapbook...")

The shortly-after-birth with older siblings (where applicable) photos.

The seasonal attire full family photo.

The multiple generations photo.

You get the idea.

Now, I'm not mocking these at all.  And I love looking at them when they're posted, truly.  But I have two serious concerns.  The aforementioned, "How the hell will I pay for all of these photo shoots?" and the potentially more serious, 

"Holy crap my girlfriend and I are both unphotogenic and will surely produce an unphotogenic child and now I'm expected to pay someone to document this professionally??"

When did this happen exactly?  

Everyone and my mother has a camera on his or her cell phone and there is certainly no dearth of photos on the internet.  Is it because the professional photos are more suitable for printing?  Maybe we've all realized that for all the Instagram photos we're taking, we're just not looking our best.  Or maybe it's simply an arm issue -- our arms aren't long enough to get everyone in the selfie.

Regardless, I will once again be soliciting donations.  Please see my Kidstarter account for payment options.  :)