One more way to say 'I love you'. A newborn photography session with Geelong photographer Michelle McKay.
A perfect little darling, sound asleep after a morning of adoration.
On the day I met my daughter, the axis of my entire world shifted.
Here was this tiny baby - this completely perfect, breathlessly beautiful little girl.
And for a little while, she was mine to keep.
I’d always wanted a child - so much so that I couldn’t allow myself to wholly believe I’d been granted motherhood until long after they’d laid this mewling infant in my arms.
I went through my entire pregnancy with a voice in the back of my head reminding me she wasn’t here yet - that anything could happen, and probably would. I’d never considered myself one of the lucky folk, so it was too much to accept, that I could be gifted this thing I’d wanted so badly.
So that first night in the hospital I stood alone on the cool linoleum floor gently rocking her, still stunned and not completely believing. Yet the stark light above the bed cast a silhouette on the pale blue curtains of this woman, holding a bundle against her chest and slowly swaying.
It was me and my daughter. We shared a shadow, still.
I realised that day that everything for me would be different, though I couldn’t have imagined or anticipated just how fiercely and desperately and completely my devotion would soon become.
I just knew that this secret - this sacred rite of passage named motherhood, had been quite suddenly passed down to me. Even as I stood there, I could feel entire untold chambers of my heart and my self opening up. They ran so deeply it hurt - this sort of ache in my chest that must have been love - a word which in the face of her now seemed so completely and utterly lacking.
I now understand this is how most parents feel when they first meet their children.
That tiny word - love - comes nowhere close to describing the feelings that overwhelm us when we meet our babies.
I never had the right words for it, it’s was far too huge.
When I gazed at my darling daughter in that first few weeks there was nothing I could do to express the enormity of it all.
So I’d take out my phone and catch the way she looked in that moment - so fresh and new, so oblivious to how much she was adored. I knew one day I could show her those photographs, tell her the story of what it was like to meet her, how it felt to become a family of three, the way she brought it all together. Like I’d been waiting my whole life for her to come and make sense of it all.
These days, I do the same for my clients.
I catch the memories of their families and their new babies.
I give them one more way to say ‘I love you’.
A precious souvenir, a token to show the journey has started.
A priceless keepsake of the way it was, when you arrived and made everything wonderful.
Enjoy these highlights from a recent in-home newborn story, photographed right here in Geelong.
Click here to enquire about availability for having your newborn story told.