Today is my youngest sons seventh birthday.
The anxiety of giving birth to my fourth child had me in panic mode.
One HYPNOTHERAPY session helped me to overcome my fear of giving birth again.
I knew this pain too well.
Although it stops as soon as the baby is born it is a pain like no other.
A beautiful pain but a barbaric one. This is the only description I could ever come up with.
This was my third home birth.
Drug free.
I wanted to feel it and not be fogged by drugs. I needed to feel life in all its painful glory, like a tribal woman giving birth on a nomadic journey.
Leading towards the birth I wandered barefoot around my garden in the early hours just after sunrise, breathing in the heavy scents of nature and breathing out labour pains.
Wandering around with my SLR may seem a strange thing to do, to carry around a camera and take photographs as I doubled up in pain every ten steps or so. But this was natural to me.
I didn't want to capture the birth itself, I was after a different image altogether, something to remember this midsummer day - in pain, in love, in anxiety, in anticipation and fear.
Heavy bellied and weighed down with pain and my unborn child drawing closer I framed and shot photographs until I felt I needed to lie down and let the pain consume me.
Here is a photograph I took on that day. This is the image which reflected how I was feeling and what was about to happen to me.
Happy Birthday my beautiful son.
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| Photocredit lynnedjones 2008 |
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