By Samantha Wassel of Between the Monkey Bars
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a photographer from Youngstown, OH, may be paying a lot more than that after she unwittingly dropped her camera lens cap into her birthing client’s fully dilated vagina.
Gina Filmore, of Crowning Moments Photography, said she was “just trying to get a better angle” when the lens cap of her trusty Nikon D800 must have slipped out of her t-shirt’s chest pocket.
[adsanity id=”35664″ align=”aligncenter”/]“I didn’t even see it happen,” she told us. “I always shove my lens cap into that pocket. It’s never fallen out before. I didn’t even realize it was missing until I packed my bag up to leave the birthing center. But by that point, everything appeared to be just fine. Mom was talking to her doula about shaking up a placenta cosmopolitan; Dad was icing his fingers, which his wife nearly crushed during contractions; and Grandma and Grandpa were fawning over Baby Fennel.
“Nope, not a salad,” she clarified after noting the perplexed look on our reporters’ faces. “That’s what they named the baby. Fennel.”
Apparently, Filmore wasn’t the only one who failed to notice the incident occur. The lens cap in question wasn’t discovered until three weeks later, when Filmore’s client came into her OB’s office complaining of uterine cramping and difficulty urinating. A follow-up ultrasound revealed the lens cap lodged between her uterus and cervix.
[adsanity id=”35667″ align=”aligncenter”/]“It was shoved up there pretty good,” her doctor told us. “And it was exerting a lot of pressure on her entire pelvic area. Everything was pinched, including her urethra. I’m just glad we discovered it before it caused any permanent damage. Something that hard has no place in a woman’s vagina. Unless it’s, well, you know.”
Filmore’s client, who requested to remain anonymous, underwent emergency surgery, and the cap was successfully removed. Her doctor told us that recovery is going well and the risk for further complications is extremely low.
But the woman’s lawyer says the outlook of a full recovery isn’t going to be enough to mollify the “traumatized mother and her family.” Less than a week after the cap was discovered, the family’s lawyer filed an official lawsuit against Filmore, seeking compensatory damages for “physical injury, emotional distress, and failure to provide a purchased product in a timely manner.”
[adsanity id=”35665″ align=”aligncenter”/]“My client should have those photos by now,” the lawyer told us. “I mean, come on, photography isn’t rocket science. Or law. Anyone can point and shoot a fucking camera.”
Filmore didn’t offer much insight into her lawyer’s defense strategy, but she did tell us that she’s almost finished editing the birth photos, and that she would really appreciate it if her lens cap was returned to her.
“I mean, it’s my equipment,” she said. “And I practically fell through the curtains to get a decent shot of her crowning. You’d think she could at least do me the service of returning my fucking lens cap.
“Honestly, I just want to put this mess behind me. All my boudoir sessions have been cancelled. Someone left a review on my business page saying I was ‘the photographer who will a pop a cap in yo’ p**sy.’ This is seriously ruining my reputation.”
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About the Author
Samantha Wassel is an Army Wife and SAHM to three energetic boys and three lazy AF cats. She enjoys running, writing, kettlebelling, reading, nerding out, and eating exorbitant amounts of goat cheese and Peanut Butter Halo Top ice cream (but not together, because barf). You can find more of her work at Between the Monkey Bars