How Birth Photography Can Impact Postpartum
Giving birth might be the most disruptive, life-changing, and transformative human experience…especially the first time you do it. EVERYTHING changes. From our bodies, to our relationships, to our priorities, to our sleep habits, to our day-to-day habits. Nothing is left untouched.
Add in the physical process of giving birth…the support we felt or the support we lacked…the care we received or the trauma we felt….
Giving birth is not just about walking out of the hospital or the birth center with a healthy baby. Giving birth is part of the foundation for postpartum and parenthood. It is incredibly important despite what our culture might tell us.
We can’t control what happens in our births, and I firmly believe that every pregnant person truly wants the very best for their baby. No one chooses a care provider or a birth location or an intervention with the intent of harm. But sometimes our births end up being so wildly different than we hoped or imagined. Sometimes we experience trauma that goes so deep we can’t even really name it.
As a birth photographer and doula, my goal is to document my client’s birth days with artistry, compassion, and a deep awareness of the importance of birth. People have lots of opinions and thoughts about birth photography (which often illustrate our culture’s general uncomfortableness with sex, birth, death), and yet very few people understand what a vital role birth photos can play in a new parent’s postpartum experience.
Having images from your birth allow you to not only reflect and remember the good moments (and there are SO many good moments), but they also help you process the hard ones. They can help move the icky feeling inside of you - and allow you to better understand WHY you might be feeling the way you do. Simply put: birth photography is a powerful postpartum processing tool. You can bring your images to your midwife or your therapist. You can look through them with a trusted friend. As often happens in birth, our minds forget some of the concrete moments of our experience. We can walk away feeling an overall sense of happiness or regret after our births are complete…never fully understanding WHY we’re feeling the way we do. Birth imagery allows us to find those missing links.
You may not hang your birth images all over your walls, but you might use them to better understand one of the most life-changing moments of your life. There is a reason mothers and grandmothers and friends share their birth stories - they stay with us for the rest of our days.
You don’t have to look beautiful in your birth images. You don’t need the perfect birth space. There will be blood and fluid, tears and sweat. The point isn’t to produce carefully orchestrated portraits that you’ll hang on your family’s walls…the point is to capture sacred moments that will live in your heart forever. These images can take some of those deep feelings and give them more color, more clarity, more understanding. It’s worth the investment.
