What is motherhood?
To me, motherhood is so many things, but first and foremost it is about being selfless and putting other little human beings before your needs, which on its own is an incredible act of love and self sacrifice.
You see, as young girls, well, for me anyway, the dream of motherhood was naturally apart of growing up. I'm certain most kids played mums and dads right? Sure you did!
I would dream of one day being a mum; I had baby names picked, the order in which I would have them, how many boys and how many girls and I was absolutely positively having them as young as possible so that we could be best friends. HA HA
Well! fast forward and I am in fact that mama that I one day hoped to be, My ideas certainly have changed, like for example, 2 children is a perfectly good number for me; A far cry from the original 8 that 10 year old me said I would have. *shudders* Imagine if we actually had to follow through with the plans we made as kids.. HA HA!
Motherhood is perhaps the hardest hood we ever will travel and as I was saying about selflessness, from the moment we find out that we are expecting, sometimes even before that, we are thinking about this baby and what is best for them. We alter our eating and drinking habits to ensure that their womb home is the safest possible place for them until they are ready to face this world from the outside; and when they do finally get placed in our arms, as Metallica once said "nothing else matters".
This little squishy human will go on to take our sleep away from us, turn our hair grey, present us with with designer under eye bags and bring out protective traits that we never knew we had.
Motherhood is being totally overwhelmed by joy, confusion, responsibility and a love that is second to none. It is new baby smell, projectile.. you know, tantrums, and so so much more. No rainbow could ever be as colourful as this thing we call motherhood.
When capturing these photos of Sazel and her son Rei, I wanted the softness, heart and soul that a mother and baby share to speak first before we see the image.
Initially I had planned to showcase these in only black and white to really capture the essence of motherhood with no distractions but colour was just too beautiful to leave out completely.
We travelled out to a stunning private property in Tamborine with views so beautiful and vast that when it was time to go home I had to stop for a moment without a camera in hand and just take it in.
Photographing was Sazel was a true pleasure, Her beauty is not only physical, its deep within her soul and it radiates from her smile. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul and this couldn't be truer with Sazel. Baby Rei did want babies do, he fed, snuggled and pee'd and poo'd all over his mama. If that isn't a true representation of motherhood, I don't know what is it.
without further ado, please enjoy these images captured for Sazel and her family to enjoy for a lifetime.
