Pregnant women find different ways of sleeping, which affects their partner's sleeping positions in bed sometimes. The non-pregnant partners have to be more mindful of the protruding belly, thus having a much worse time sleeping. However it could also be so much more tender than before.

Jana Romanova's photo series 'Waiting' captures these tender moments. Romanova stayed overnight with young pregnant couples across Russia, just to sneak into their bedrooms around dawn (yes it sounds creepy!) to photograph the couples sleeping. She gets on a ladder to capture the moment when they're snug, vulnerable, and often clutching at the growing life within the bellies.



Romanova was inspired by her own pregnant friends.

“Once I was helping my friends, who were expecting parents, make some repairs in their house, and there was a ladder in the middle of the room right near the bed,” Romanova says. “In the morning I took some images of them sleeping just for my memory, and then decided that I can make a whole project like this.”

Romanova says she would just set up the ladder, creep into the room around dawn and photograph the scene as quietly as possible over the course of 10 or more minutes.



“Of course sometimes people woke up, but as soon as I photographed always really early in the morning on weekends, people wanted to sleep more than anything else, and it was not a big problem,” Romanova explains. “And even if they didn't fall asleep later--it was their decision on what to do, whether to change a pose or not.”

In some images, you can tell almost tell that people may be pretending to be asleep. But it's still compelling.

“I thought that if I tried to photograph expecting people sleeping, I would understand something new about their relationships,” Romanova writes. “But in the end, I was just fascinated by the trust of people who let me stay at their apartment and allowed to photograph in such an intimate moment.”

'Waiting' is currently on exhibition at Mosteiro de Tibães.