Hi honey can i take your picture, can you smile at mummy?
hellllooooo…can you look at me…and say silly sausages…
hey whats this, *blows raspberry*
OH! WHAT’S THIS IN MY CAMERA? CAN YOU SEE IT? *lots of sharp intakes of breath*
Can you see it? Can you see?….Its…its..its a…SPIDER!!
I wrote this post last weekend and have umm'd and aah'd about posting it. Im not the most controversial of blogger and i would try and be slightly sensitive to the people i know read here but this story is so moving and really made me think about what we can do to help parents in these situations. So please do read on if you can.
Sarahx
This weekend I was watching an amazing baby photography workshop online with Creativelive. It was being run by Sandy Puc, who is an incredibly successful portrait photographer. Being run live from the States meant that time wise for me it was a bit awkward to say the least. Starting at 5pm for me and ending at midnight.
You can imagine me trying to juggle managing 5 children, tea, bath and bedtime whilst trying to catch what Sandy was saying was a little….um….impossible.
But i managed to watch a lot of the stuff after bedtime and on the second night a combination of bad nights sleep and hectic, busy day meant that i was starting to struggle to stay awake towards the end and was almost at the point of giving up when Sandy mentioned something that made me sit up.
Sandy shared a story about this charity called, Now I lay me down to sleep, which she helped to co-found. This charity was borne out of a phone call she took from the father of a baby who was born with an incompatible with life condition and they were desperate to have some beautiful images of their baby before he passed away. She went and took pictures of their baby's last moments and also afterwards once the baby had passed away. You couldn't listen to her without being moved to tears. As she was herself also. Please do click the link. The images shown there are so beautiful.
If you have never been to my blog before you wouldn't know that 'my other job' is a NICU nurse in a large regional neonatal unit and over the years i have cared for families in these sort of heartbreaking situations and it is, even as a professional, incomprehensible to imagine how parents cope with the stark reality that these moments with their babies will be the only memories they will ever have.
Think of all the thousands of photographs you have of your children, even if your baby is only 12 months old you probably have a hard drive full of different images that you can look at, if you want to and remember your child as they were, how they are now. You have had time to make those memories, tell stories and preserve them on film or digital. These parents that have had to say goodbye to their babies so so tragically early in their lives will only have, in comparison, milliseconds to build memories, hold onto them and preserve them in their minds.
Thats why i so love this idea. The idea that local photographers can offer parents this service, for free and give them beautiful images of their child, their beautiful baby, the part of their family that was here but couldn't stay. I particularly like that Sandy mentions that the nurses looking after a very sick baby will mention the service to the parents and show them a brochure and ask them if they wish to contact a photographer for them. The fact that it is offered by the hospital as part of the care given to the parents. Not that its one of those services you have to 'know' about, or have a friend who knows a friend or anything. Access for all.
I suppose actually realistically parents in this kind of pain may not have the clarity of thought to think 'yes lets get a professional photographer to take pictures of my baby'. They are dealing with such a crushing sad truth and lets face it, at that moment, it might be last thing they want to think of but so many of the parents on the testimonials say that after a time they so appreciated someone asking, offering and having the images done. Even if at the time it was a blur. When they felt strong enough, they have the opportunity to look back and remember the memories like we all do when we look at pictures of our children.
Im sorry this is a little bit of a sad post and its not my intention. The truth is that babies do die. It happens. It shouldn't, the stillbirth numbers in this country continue to be unacceptable. Its horrible and heartbreaking but it does happen, parents have to somehow face it and we have to, as a community, ask ourselves how we are going to support those walking through the searing pain of infant loss.
and im a photographer and this is something i think i can do.
twitter that is, telling us all that Davy Jones from The monkees has died at the age of 65 about an hour before the BBC reported it.
Ah i used to love watching the Monkees show..Just sitting here watching this and thinking ah he was kinda my favourite *blushes* but then my daughter has just come in as i was watching this video on youtube and said ‘ew he looks like a girl!’ #burstthebubble.
Enjoy, especially those awesome shapes he can throw *guffaw*
RIP Davey 🙂
I loved the landscapes theme last week from Tara at #thegallery. This week its friends. I didn’t know whether to start with my friends, our friends, the kids friends…it could be a wall of photographs presented.
But after a bit of thought id stuck with one.
My friend.
this was taken just before she selfishly took herself and her family off to the other side of the world. 🙂
We started school together a bazillion years ago and have been mates ever since. Her mum even forgave me when we were mucking about a few days before my friend’s wedding and i told her that it would be okay getting on a crazy pony bare back which she subsequently fell off and managed fortunately to not cause any further damage to the back injury she was just getting over.
yeh. not the most responsible action on my behalf. But well, in my defence, she could have held on more! Im kidding mel, you know that right?
Good times. 😉
sliding in late….as usual.
1. I whined about my daughter's lousy sleeping yesterday and guess what that evening the girl was wailin' and my fab OH stayed up with her and persisted with a bit of controlled crying whilst myself and our son (who shares her room so had to vacate) slept through. Which is quite astonishing given how much noise she was making but maybe that gives you an idea of how tired we all are. So mwah to the OH. 🙂
2. Book day? Do you love it or hate it? Three kids in outfits, one of which seriously hates dressing up and is already, i think, planning the tummy ache for friday morning!
3. I lost my change bag last week. Gutted. Lost in that all to familiar fried mummy way, that would be getting all your kids in the car and leaving it on the pavement. *duh* and don't give me sympathy I have done it before with different objects and i thought id learnt my lesson. pah!
4. We cycled to swimming lessons this evening at 5.30 because it was light enough to do so! Ah the spring is coming back our way.
5. I tried very hard to watch a baby photography workshop over the weekend that was being broadcast live over at creativelive. It didn't go that well, the me watching it part. The workshop looked fantastic but it being on American time meant that it clashed with tea, bath and bedtime on a weekend when the OH was away :-/ That and an unfortunately timed 'cant really rush this' phone call meant that i missed some key bits. So anyone want to let me in on the secrets she shared?
6. Some music folks, love this cute video.
7. I have put in some forward planning to mother's day and actually told the OH what i would like. It seems like it takes us ladies years to realize that they are not going to just 'guess' what we would like!
8. I found a apple core trying hard to blend into my car upholstery. Its not pretty. Im not proud, id like to say it was because i was clearing the car but in fact i think i was searching for a pound coin i thought id seen for those annoying little token things on trolleys!
9. Whats that? You've never seen a scooter riding fairy?
10. Im loving Pinterest at the moment. You can come and follow me here at the moment i just hang out in the travel and photography sections. hmmm..now what does that tell you?
Linkin' up wid de ladies….
