The umbilical cord is the first tangible connection between a mother and baby. This cord has been feeding the infant nutrition from the mother for nine months. The mother’s affection for the infant has grown over the course of those nine exhausting months.
Photographer Monet Nicole Moutrie, took the opportunity to capture the awe-inspiring power of birth with a startlingly beautiful image. In it, a newborn baby is still connected to his placenta by his umbilical cord that is adjusted to spell out the word “love.”
Water births are substantially increasing in popularity, but many people have little idea what this unique birth experience actually entails. There are many different ways to give birth in water, including pushing in a mother’s bathtub at home or giving birth in an inflated pool at a birthing facility. Because of the buoyancy of the water, proponents of water births assert that they are not only more soothing, but also more comfortable.
Let these intimate photos help you get a sense of what a water delivery is actually like.
“I attended this home birth in the early summer of 2015. Erin, the mother, labored throughout the night and morning, with her loving partner Jess, by her side.”
” Birth is one of the most intense and beautiful experiences I’ve witnessed. There aren’t enough words to convey the strength, the joy and the surrender that birth requires.”
“In over fifty births, this particular image moves me each time I return to it. It speaks so well to what birth requires and the reward it offers. I love the physicality of this image—the perfectly coiled cord resting on the mother’s postpartum belly. And I also love the look of pure relief on the mother’s face.”
“A relief that is mirrored in her newly born child.Intensely physical and emotionally taxing is birth. Every time, it surprises me by revealing to me glimmers of strength and beauty that have been long concealed from the public’s view.” — Monet Nicole
