Welcome to the first official guest post in my new series – the photo I’m thankful for.
It’s a sort of extension of my instagram community #ShowYouWereThere. A place for people to share the photo that they are just so pleased they either had taken of themselves or that they took of someone who means the world to them.
I shared the photos I’m thankful for a few weeks ago, and now I’m thrilled to welcome the lovely Sarah and Lauren from 2 brides to 2 mums to be my first guest bloggers in the series.
After seeing my tweet about the series, Sarah got in touch to chat about getting involved and sent me over this gorgeous photo of Lauren.
So, without further ado, here’s the photo Sarah and Lauren are thankful for, and I’ll hand you over to Sarah to tell you all about it.
“They say when a child is created, a mother is too (two mothers in our case!). So when it comes to preserving memories of such a magical time, it really should capture not just your babies journey, but yours too. With this in mind, my wife Lauren and I vowed to try and be present in the photographs that documented our new sons life, and to sometimes be in front of the camera, not behind it. However, we haven’t always been successful in this! As bloggers, we take a lot of pictures, but as new mums one of the things that struck us about motherhood is how fleeting moments are – we wanted to remember everything about having a baby. We documented our journey to become parents, and the pregnancy, in detail, so also wanted to capture every new expression on our son’s face, every milestone, every ‘first’ that would never be a ‘first’ again. This resulted in us so far taking around 400 pictures of our son in 9 months, and although we try and be in those pictures ourselves sometimes, we aren’t always successful!
However, there are a few pictures I look back at, and are so glad we’ve taken, it makes me vow to try and take more. Me tearfully holding our son moments after he was born, my wife’s ‘tree of life’ breastfeeding picture, Lauren unwrapping presents with him on our first Christmas morning as a family, me laughing with him on our first trip to the beach. Motherhood has been the hardest, but the most beautiful, magical time of our lives.
When I saw Madeline encouraging mums to be present more in pictures of their child, I was reminded of the vow we’d made, and decided to choose a picture of my own to include. That was the difficult part! But the picture I’ve chosen represents a lot to me, as well as being of the two people I love most in the world. It was taken when our son was about two weeks old, being held by my wife, sat in our garden – it was mid June and the sun was shining. The journey to become parents for us hadn’t been a smooth one – we conceived Oskar on our third time of trying, although the IVF not going smoothly meant we had to freeze our embryos and have a frozen embryo transfer months later. Lauren had extreme morning sickness that lasted most of the pregnancy, and a haematoma that resulted in such a large bleed at 6wks we were told she had likely miscarried. Although we had planned a home birth, Lauren was diagnosed with pre eclampsia at 33wks, meaning a two week hospital stay for her, and induction booked for 37 weeks, providing her condition didn’t worsen. The induction wasn’t successful and we opted for a caesarean, to avoid more interventions and a potential emergency situation from a failed second induction.
Our son was born in such a peaceful, beautiful birth, with our wedding music playing in the background, but afterwards he was on antibiotics, and after initially going home from hospital, we were readmitted due to him having prolonged jaundice.
The picture I have chosen was taken when we finally got to leave hospital, and just enjoy being at home with our new baby. It felt like winning the lottery, we couldn’t believe we had been lucky enough to be given such a perfect child. I love how plain to see it is that she adores him, how content he looks snuggled against her, how peaceful and content she looks – it is a testament to the strength she showed to create and grow him, and what an incredible mother she has made. At nine months our son now seems like a little boy, rather than a baby, time goes by so fast!
There are times when we don’t feel we look our best, and couldn’t think of anything worse than being in a photograph, but when our children are older, they won’t see how tired we look, or that we hadn’t put on makeup that day, they will just see a happy memory of them spending time with their mothers. We owe it to our children to create photographs that don’t just capture momentos for us, but for them too.”
Thank you so much to Sarah for sharing your photo, and the beautiful story behind it.
You can find Sarah and Lauren on their blog – 2 brides to 2 mums.
And you can follow them on these social media pages:
Twitter: @2brides2mums
Instagram: @SarahLovesL and @Laurennune
Do you have a photo and a story you would like to share?
If you’d like to take part in my ‘the photo I’m thankful for’ guest series, or would just like a bit more information about it, please do send me an email to thisgloriouslife@gmail.com.
