Click. Click. Click. I’m vaguely aware of the sound of a camera shutter coming from somewhere above me. I push deep into my bottom, a dull, rising ache reverberating around my stomach and back. Click. Click. The noise is now in front of me, I think, but I can’t focus on it, so great is the effort of pushing. I take a deep breath in and heave again, cheered on by two midwives and my partner holding my hand, bearing down to squeeze away the pain. Click. The sound comes again but, still, it’s easy to tune out as another wave of pain begins to rise, along with a mild panic that my pushes are achieving nothing. And then, suddenly, I feel something beginning to descend within me, the weight of my baby moving down through the birth canal. Everything in the room fades away as I’m consumed by the primal sensation of my baby preparing to leave my body. The feeling overwhelms me. It and I become tangled; elementally intertwined. I am nothing but this feeling.
I know, now, my birth photographer, the person behind the “clicks”, managed to capture this transcendental moment. In the images, my eyes are screwed up with effort, my chin is doubled on my neck, and my fingers are gripping my partner’s hand so tightly they’ve turned white. At the top of the taut hump of my stomach, a slight shadow appears to reveal the vague shape of a baby about to be born. The stills are strikingly visceral.
During my pregnancy, each time I revealed my plans to have a photographer at the birth, I was met with a slightly different response: curiosity, concern, jealousy, disapproval. There was an overriding sense from most, though, that, in having someone take photos of my child’s birth, I was engaging in an act of extreme vanity. “Is nothing sacred?” came the cry, again and again.
Historically more common in America, birth photography is, seemingly, on the rise in the UK. In 2024, BabyCentre registered 250 mentions on its UK forums compared with 77 in 2020 – an increase of 187%. Lacey Barratt, owner and director of the International Association of Professional Birth Photographers, says many of her photographers now make a full-time wage from the profession. “Those of us who have been shooting births for a decade or longer can certainly attest that over time there has definitely been an increase in inquiries and bookings.” A sign, perhaps, that millennial mothers have grown weary of saccharine sweet newborn photoshoots and instead want something grittier.
A birth photography package costs in the region of between £2,000 and £3,000, depending on the offering. Many photographers provide doula support, too, and it is, perhaps, not a surprise that the popularity of birth photography has risen in line with the use of doulas in the UK: women are taking control of their most intimate of days.
My own birth photographer, Amy Lee, offers breath-work support for women in labour, in addition to photography. “I’m a birth partner,” says Lee. In fact, she first trained as a photojournalist with a focus on war photography and I’m struck by the similarities between the two: both bloody, both intimate, both requiring a photographer to be there and also not; to sit on the fringes of the frontline and observe, bear witness, through a lens. “You have to shoot fast, not get in the way, be invisible,” she says of her work as a photojournalist, although this could surely apply to her work in a delivery room, too. In reality, Lee found the reasons she chose not to pursue war photography were why she enjoys birth photography. “I wasn’t somebody who could just stand back and witness,” she says, explaining that, during labour she acts as an advocate for her clients. There are further similarities between the two vocations, though, not least in establishing what should and shouldn’t be seen; what is and isn’t intrusive. Unlike in photojournalism, however, in birth photography, the line between what’s invasive and what isn’t is dictated by the subjects of the images: the clients decide what they want shot. “There are certain moments that some people tend to be extremely private about, whereas other people are quite happy to share those,” says Lee. “For me, intrusiveness comes when you’re crossing the boundaries of people’s values.”
Establishing those boundaries is something Lee takes seriously. We meet three times before my due date, including once with my partner, Stuart, in which we also discuss his needs. (They agree on a “safe word” to use if he wants her to leave.) As well as talking us through the practicalities – when to call her; how long she takes to arrive; what she brings (snacks and a roll mat to kip on if needed) – she also goes through the types of photos we’re comfortable having. Do I want a crowning shot? Skin-to-skin? The first feed? My placenta? As we talk, parameters are drawn up, with Lee taking note of where our red lines are. She advises us to contact the hospital: their red lines are just as important and, although one doesn’t need permission to bring a photographer to a birth, it’s respectful to ask, especially considering that staff are likely to appear in photos. (This fastidious regard for others continues into labour with Lee checking in with each new staff member in order to gain consent. Everyone gives it, gladly.) Our pre-birth meetings feel like a combination of NCT classes and wedding planning, albeit with the proviso that, with birth, there’s only so much you can control.
For many, this is the beauty of birth photography. Lynsey Harrison, 36, has had her three births photographed for this reason. “You can’t pose for a photo during birth,” she says. “It’s natural, it’s real, it’s raw.” Harrison praises her own birth photographer for capturing “beautiful” and “graphic” scenes. “We’re not used to looking at our own vaginas and blood running down our legs, or seeing ourselves naked from various angles and perspectives while pushing out a baby,” she says. “I want to see those photos, because I want to be reminded of how powerful I was.” For others, though, birth can be a traumatic event; not one they want to be reminded of.
Dr Kim Thomas, CEO of the Birth Trauma Association, says that for most women who approach them, birth has been intensely frightening and, often, involved a medical emergency, such as the use of forceps or a caesarean. “It’s difficult to see that capturing the moment of birth would be anything other than distressing,” she says. A close friend of mine, who has birth trauma from her first birth, confirms this, saying she would have found photos of her labour extremely triggering. “It would serve as snapshots of an experience I’m desperate to forget.”
I’m aware then that my desire to have a photographer at the birth of my second child came from a position of privilege: I had a positive experience at my first. So positive, in fact, that it implanted in me a deep curiosity about my body. Like Lynsey, I wanted to look back and see what it was capable of; to reread the story, the narrative arc, of one of the most momentous days of my life.
I’d be lying, though if I said the presence of a photographer didn’t affect the way I prepared. Having previously been determined to have an epidural – I’d had one in my first labour and loved it – I dabbled, for a while, with the notion of a water birth, thinking, slightly madly, that the photos would be better, more dynamic. I didn’t do any hypnobirthing or rehearse birth affirmations, but I did get highlights and a pedicure. I also became increasingly anxious about having an unplanned caesarean, not because of the impracticalities of recovery with a toddler, but because it would have an impact on the photos I’d get. According to the rules at my hospital, second birth partners, including photographers, have to leave the room as soon as a situation becomes an emergency.
On the day, none of my fears came to fruition. Once the contractions ramped up, any desire to get pictures in the pool evaporated and I requested an epidural. Lee, having liaised with my partner, arrived as the anesthesia was being placed, bringing with her a bag of snacks and cups of tea, a testament to the fact that a good birth photographer is, first and foremost, a good birth partner.
In fact, my abiding memory of having her there is not the click of her camera, but the conversation we had, once my epidural had kicked in, about the joys and challenges of raising boys – she has one; I was about to have two. It was a level of intimacy I hadn’t anticipated and it made me feel more powerful than any affirmation could have done. And I don’t remember her being there at the point of birth, because she’d made herself invisible as she captured moments I’d later look back on in wonder.
Lee says she wants her work to empower women and normalise birth so it’s no longer something to be hidden or deemed messy, unsightly, or frightening. Birth is bloody and beautiful and those things can, she argues, coexist within our consciousness. Too often, blood is depicted as a warning; something to be feared. “Actually,” Lee says, “blood is life.” Looking at images of birth, she adds, is the best way to normalise it. “If we [women] can’t look at it ourselves then what hope do we have?”
This raises an interesting question about who my photos are for. Lynsey has hers in albums that she looks at with her children the night before their birthdays. A few others, chosen with visitors in mind, are on display around her house. So will I put mine on my mantelpiece? Share them on WhatsApp with friends and family? Upload them to social media?
Instagram, of course, may not allow them: the app bans nude images. While its guidelines claim nudity in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after birth moments are OK, some birth accounts, such as Megan Rossiter’s Birth-ed, have given up sharing such images as they found they were constantly at risk of being shut down. “I stopped in March,” says Rossiter. “Anything that’s not a nipple or mid vaginal birth is still OK. Anything else seems to be either hidden or removed or blocks my account in some way.”
That said, while movements such as the Empowered Birth Project campaign to allow uncensored images of childbirth on the app, agree with Lee that to see is to educate, inform and celebrate, I can’t help but feel a tug of conflict. Dr Kim Thomas tells me women who approach her organisation say they find seeing images of birth on social media “extremely triggering”, something my friend can attest to. “I couldn’t look at anything birth related for the first two years,” she says.
Probably, then, the photos – the most intimate ones, at least – are just for my partner and me. Certainly, I’ve enjoyed looking back at them at my own pace, with my sleeping newborn in my arms. I’ve been struck by how familiar the baby in the images looks: we didn’t know him at the time, but we do now. Sometimes I worry what he will make of the photographs when he grows up; after all, he’s the only person in the room whose permission we didn’t seek.
And then I’m struck by the care displayed by the team around me and captured in the stills and am grateful we’ll get to share that with him. One photo shows the student midwife who delivered him locking eyes with me as I push, her expression bright and joyful. Another has her gently tucking my hair behind my ear as I try to latch my new baby, an act of such tenderness my eyes filled with tears as soon as I saw it.
In the end, it isn’t a photo of me actually giving birth that takes my breath away. Instead, it’s one taken just afterwards, in the limbo land between life and not-quite-life, when my baby was still caught between two worlds: inside and outside; before and after. The photograph is brutal, bloody, beautiful. It’s of the umbilical cord, not yet cut, snaking outwards from the darkness of within into the bright light of the hospital room. In the picture, I can see my second-degree tear – then brand new, now something I am intimately familiar with – and, even in the stillness of the photo, the silvery grey cord that appears to pulse with the life it’s given my baby for nine months.
It’s not a photograph I’ll share – on social media or elsewhere – but it is one I’ll cherish. And it’s a moment – the last time I was physically one with my child – I’d never have seen had I not invited someone with a camera into my birth. What, really, could be more sacred than that?
