The Spike

So true

So true – and thinking about it, I’m struggling to think of many pictures of me and my mum together except as a baby, as she never liked how she looked in pictures. I try and take ones now of her with the grand kids whether she likes it or not. My dad only had one photo of his parents together and his mum is looking away as she didn’t like her photo taken. It is sad. When we go places now at some point I hand my husband the camera and say take some pictures please, but I always feel pissed off having to ask, but like you said, needs must. We went for a walk at a country park recently and my two year old held my hand all the way round; only wanted me. She briefly switched to daddy and I whipped the camera straight out and took a photo because it looked so sweet. It occurred to me then it how the one-sided nature of the snapping might actually create a false picture in the future – other people look and say “Daddy’s girl” etc, and while it is true she is “Mummy’s girl” too and I don’t like the idea of them having the impression that I didn’t enjoy them or love being around them just as much as their father. I’ve overthought it now but I’m going to not feel guilty about handing over the phone.

So true!!

This hit me the other day when I realised if I died the kids would have no photos of me with them. So I’ve taken matters into my own hands and booked a photographer to come and do a session with us (Hopefully I found a good one – anyone with photos of naked newborns in knitted hats I immediately ruled out). I’m also crap at taking photos of toddlers and would like a few unblurry photos of them together. I think my husband was joking when I told him. Ha! That’s his birthday and Christmas sorted – and for the grannies.

This bugs me too. I ended up getting an ex colleague (who is now a baby photographer) to do a short photo shoot with us, just so that we had a few photos of me with the kids.

For precisely this reason there are no photos of me with any three of my babies as newborns. In both instances (twins followed by a singleton) I’d had an emergency c section so had been sawn in half, run over by a truck, drained of all blood and stuck in a hospital bed and told to breastfeed so was in no fit state to pick up a camera. Because of this juggernaut of body blows and because my husband is selfish, thoughtless twat when it comes to immortalising Kodak moments, there is nowt. Friends who came to visit took photos of him holding the babies but, mysteriously, none of me, which still grinds my goat. And, when I was well enough (which was MONTHS down the line) it was me wielding the camera because, frankly, it never occurred to him. Even worse, because my hideous c sections were both under general anaesthetics I have seen none of my children being born so this whole newborn-in-hospital bit is a blank I can’t even fill with photographs. If I think about it too deeply it breaks my heart a bit.
When my twin girls were two-and-a-half I took the situation by the scruff of the neck and dragged us all off to Richmond Park with the camera. Because I didn’t want to look vain and because, inadvertently, I appear to have signed in my life’s blood a contract to abject myself on the sacrificial maternal altar and put myself last, I took about a twenty, stupendous, frame-worthy pictures him with our daughters first. Only then did I announce it was my turn (note, I had to suggest this to him. At no point did he leap in and say “No, no. There are none of you. Let’s take some of you first…”. My husband is amazing but he’s a twat when it comes to photographs.) but as I handed him the camera the battery ran out, the camera died and, once again, there were no photos, which I’m still pissed off about seven years later.
This post has galvanised me to push myself into photos of my children, for them, and also for me, because on the latter, why not? I always look like I’ve got one eye and a giant nose in photographs but the bird holding the baby in your black and white pic looks as miserable as sin and as if she’s growing a moustache and yet here she is, immortalised forever and rightly part of her family set.
Thank you for wise words.

You MUST get photos taken of you with your children for every reason but most importantly because if anything should happen to you — you want your children to be able to look at photos of you. But not just you with them but you holding them or looking at them or doing whatever in such a way that one day they will be able to look at those photos and know — without a shadow of doubt — that their mother really and truly loved them.

This is a wonderful idea and I really hope this struck a chord with your readers with children. My mother died when I was 11, after being ill from when I must have been about 7 and in and out of hospital and I don’t have a single photo of her with either me or my brother as she hated having her photo taken and we’ve only got about 5 of her taken during her whole life. Without being a creep, when I see a mother taking photos of her children in public I always say ‘would you like me to take one of you together?”
Get your photos taken this weekend parents!