Newborn Photographer Tilly | A Mother is Born
When we become mothers we forget sometimes to breathe. We really just forget.
I will never forget the day my son was born. You would think the birth I had at home would be the one big lasting memory. It is not. It was a short while later that I asked my midwife “What do I do now?” Everything before that moment was my body talking to me and telling me what to do. At this moment, lying in bed with my sleeping husband and son, I was clueless with what I was supposed to do. I needed to know what I should do next. She said, “you will know”.
I laid there in my home next to my husband and son. I had a son. My husband was snoring happily after a long morning. My son was snoring with him. I held my breath listening to them. In and out. Then I felt it. For the very first time, I felt it. Like a feather brushing softly against my arm. Breathe. My son was breathing. He was next to me. His breath fell on me and my whole body realized there was a baby next to me that was mine. He was alive. He was my son.
I had been holding my breath up until this moment and realized I was getting light headed. Like a tidal wave, I rushed air into my lungs and took a big breath of air. That would not be the first time or the last time my son took my breath away. I did not sleep a wink the next 12 hours. I just watched the two people I love more than anything in the world sleep and breathe.
Perhaps it is easy to forget that the day a child is born, a mother is also born.
In truth, I did not “fall in love” with my son until day four. On this day, like leaves on a tree in autumn gently falling to the ground, everything in my life dropped softly away and nothing else mattered. Nothing.
Today I saw a mom whose leaves had fallen off her tree. And nothing else mattered. It was beautiful.
This mother is a cancer survivor who never thought she would have a baby. She gets to look into the eyes of a miracle every day. Together, I know they will conquer the world.
