Below is the photo story of a birth I recently photographed at the Kingston General Hospital. It is the story of baby Franklin’s birth. He is the third child for this family, and the third boy. His mum laboured for only a brief time at the hospital – delivering him just a couple of hours after she had arrived to the labour & delivery wing.
I was moved to tears during photographing the birth. I never cry during a photo session. I never cry at emotional parts of weddings, or heartfelt speeches. I get moved by all of those things, for sure. I remain in the moment, looking for the moment, pressing the shutter.
I didn’t cry for the births of my own three children. I was so fully engrossed in the moment – in how cute my babies were – that I didn’t have time for tears. It was pure adrenaline and love those three times.
I don’t think I cried the first time I photographed a birth, either. I was awed and dismayed and probably a little afraid to screw it all up. That was three years ago.
This time I did cry. Once Franklin took his first breath and wailed with those fresh baby lungs of his, I felt I’d witnessed something tremendously powerful. I welled up.
The transfigurative moment that flits in with just the smallest change in circumstances – a baby descends a few inches through the birth canal into the open world – is a wondrous thing. One moment, there is no one there and the next – there is a being that demands all your attention. Of course that being was there all along, but it was encased, enveloped in warmth, and quite undemanding of his parents’ time and efforts.
Perhaps this is based on my own experience, and my projections of my own welcoming of our third-born into the family. Perhaps the emotions I felt during this photography session were in part because I briefly longed for that time when my babies were so very fresh.
Perhaps it was the happiest of emotions that come from a certain knowing. Knowing that this little infant with a full set of blonde and wet curls was going to go home to the luckiest type of existence: surrounded by the unconditional love of his mother and father and the complex love of his two older brothers who are at such ages as to make them only vaguely familiar with the idea of having a baby brother and what that might mean, and generally ensconced in the all-encompassing blanket of love and safety this family has woven for one another. I can tell that Franklin, whether inside or outside the womb, will always be enveloped in warmth.
He’s a lucky boy, indeed, and I wish this family all the happiness in the world.
