Who prepared you for the emotional ups and downs of pregnancy and postpartum?
As a maternity & family photographer, I have been able to experience the process of creating life up close. Watching many women's tummies grow and capturing the curves of motherhood for keepsakes made me feel like a close participant in the thrill and excitement of bringing a life into the world.
With each photoshoot, I made the woman feel powerful, beautiful and confident during her pregnancy. Yet, Somehow, after the confidence of the sessions and with the baby's birth, I was overcome with an incalculable sense of joy. I felt the process was also mine and I was completely flattered to be a part of such an intimate moment for couples.
I saw motherhood as idyllic, very delicate, very happy, very exciting, and very challenging. When you are not a mother, but you are so close to motherhood, you think you have that feeling of empathy and sensitivity side by side with those who live it in their own flesh. Seeing a lifestyle from the outside will never be the same as living it.
Today I can tell you that I have been practicing MOTHERHOOD for a year, and that empathy that I thought I had when I saw pregnant clients or with their baby in their arms, is not the same as the one I have today. When I became pregnant no one prepares you to live through such abrupt emotional and physical changes, nor does anyone give you the tools to live the process "eternally happy and calm".
When my baby was born, I was able to feel in the deepest part of my being, something I often heard among my clients and wished to experience: "to love inexplicably and inexhaustibly someone without knowing them".
Motherhood transforms, it makes you very strong but also vulnerable, it makes you creative but also frustrates you, it fills you with magic but also exhausts you, it fills you with immense joy but also gives you touches of nostalgia.
I feel motherhood as a lifestyle that makes you live a scale of emotions and very challenging experiences.
New mothers live full of "expectations" or at least that has been my case, and the reality is that parenting has a lot of merit. I applaud myself and all of you, "we are doing it right".
There is no magic formula for living a life as a mother that borders on perfection, or that can be compared to a stereotype of what an ideal mom should be and do.
I am not here to give you an advice, but a contribution from my experience, live your pregnancy from the knowledge, ask everything you want, do not demand too much of yourself, live the postpartum and the care of your baby under your instinct, that will never fail you. Cry, laugh, love, and allow yourself to be tired. Time will pass faster than you can imagine, as cliché as it sounds. Everything comes around, everything gets organized and evolves for the better.
Motherhood is evolution, and now that I am living it to the fullest, that empathy I was talking about at the beginning has become a feeling that comes to the surface when I see other women going through the same things I am going through...
I am lucky to be able to capture the stages of a woman before and after being a "Mother". What a family portrait transmits, is achieved with closeness, and that is what I live to the fullest with each photo session.
Today I have opened up to you mom, I understand you and I embrace you tightly.
Until next time,
A mom photographer.