Please Be In The Photograph With Your Children

One of the things I say most often during newborn sessions is:

“Please, you need to be in the photographs too.”

And almost every time, mothers answer the same way.

“No… not today.”
“I look exhausted.”
“I still haven’t lost the baby weight.”
“My hair is awful.”
“I haven’t done my nails.”
“I’ll do photographs when I feel more like myself again.”

And honestly?

I understand all of it.

Because early motherhood can feel brutal sometimes.

You are sleeping in fragments.
Your body no longer feels fully yours.
You barely recognise yourself in the mirror.
You are giving everything to another tiny human being every single day.

But here is the thing mothers almost never realise:

your baby does not see any of that.

Your baby does not care whether your hair was coloured.
Whether you wore makeup.
Whether your stomach was still soft from pregnancy.
Whether you looked “perfect”.

To your child, you are quite literally the most beautiful thing in the world.

You are home.
You are safety.
You are the person whose heartbeat they already knew before they were even born.

And one day, these photographs will not really belong to you anymore.

They will belong to your children.

It is their history.

One day they will look at these photographs and think:

“That was my mother.”
“She was there.”
“She held me like this.”
“She loved me.”

And I promise you — not a single child will ever look at a photograph and think:

“I wish my mum had lost five kilos first.”

They will only see you.

Sometimes I almost force mothers into the frame.

Not because I want perfect portraits.

But because I know how quickly life moves.

The newborn days disappear.
The tiny hands disappear.
The sleepy weight of a baby on your chest disappears.

Everything changes so quietly and so unbelievably fast.

And later, photographs become proof that this little moment once existed.

That you existed inside it too.

So please.

Be in the photographs.

Even if you are exhausted.
Even if your hair is unwashed.
Even if you do not feel beautiful yet.

Because one day your children will not care about any of those things.

They will simply be grateful that you were there.