Breastfeeding is something different for everyone. Some mums aren’t interested in documenting this thing that they’re having such a hard time with. Some mums feel uncomfortable being photographed while breastfeeding. All of that is absolutely, totally valid. But this letter isn’t for them.
This letter for those people with a tiny nagging feeling that they’d love to celebrate these brief, fleeting moments with their baby. Or maybe it’s not a nagging feeling - maybe you've been thinking about it forever and you are absolutely ready. This is not to say that your breastfeeding journey has to have be completely smooth in order to celebrate it. For some women, it’s exactly the opposite - it’s been really hard and this photoshoot is the moment of staggering to the peak of the mountain.
I was talking to one of the beautiful mothers who I photographed recently. We were on the beach with her family, the session almost over, when her husband nudged her and said ‘don’t you want some breastfeeding photos?’ - like she'd almost talked herself out of having them taken or even asking for them.
She told me she wished she’d had some photos taken of her breastfeeding when her baby was younger - that now that he was older she felt a bit uncomfortable about other people’s judgment in putting them up on the wall. But here we were right then, with her beautiful family and me, and now was the time.
Even in just the moment of having the photos taken, she was so happy to finally have documented this moment before her baby stopped feeding.
I love taking photos of mums breastfeeding their babies. I love what a unique bond it is. I love the quietness and stillness of it. I love the intimacy. I love what it represents for many of my mums. I love getting to be a totally safe space where openly breastfeeding is completely normalised and that through creating and sharing these moments, we get to spread that out into the world.
If you’ve ever had the thought ‘I’d like to document this time with my baby’ (of whatever age!) then I am your person. It would be my absolute privilege to be that space for you.