On the morning of 9th June 2015, just before Rob left for work, I got a call. It was Lina, one of the amazing midwives of JustLink Health Services whom I have gotten to know over the last couple of months. I was pretty sure I knew what the call was about. The call that I’ve been anxiously been ‘on call’ for for the last few weeks.

Two amazing mamas in their final weeks of pregnancy have given me the honour of photographing their baby’s births and mama number 1 was experiencing some surges.

“It could be early labour, but no need for everyone to go in just yet. We’re on our way and will update you when we know more.”

So I got out of bed and got myself and my camera bag ready to head out the door any moment. I waited for about an hour and then Lina informed me that Shivani hadn’t had any more surges so I could get on with my day.

And so I did, still knowing that anything could happen. This was the sweetness of being ‘on call’.

Later that evening, around 6pm, Lina messaged to say that Shivani was having surges again so this might be it. I headed back home, started working on dinner, ate and then waited.

Rob came home and found me laying on the ground with my phone at my hand. He sat next to me and ate his dinner and then the call came from Alli, another midwife who would be assisting at the birth and who lives a couple of streets away from us in Bandra.

“Tina, come now. She is 4-5cm dilated.”

“Oh, I gotta go!”

Rob was definitely more nervous than I was. For some reason I was confident I wouldn’t miss anything. It was already about 10:30pm so most of Mumbai’s maddening traffic should have died down by now and it should take us about 20 minutes to get there. Rob has huffing and puffing to get me out the door STAT. It was quite a sight to see.

I reached Alli’s place and we waited for our taxi who seemed to be going round in circles trying to find us. Alli, who is an incredibly experienced midwife, seemed a little unsure of us making it in time as this was Shivani’s second birth and they tend to be quicker than the first. That made me a little nervous and I implored the taxi driver to get us there fast.

Thankfully, I was right about the traffic and we reached in about 20 minutes.

The house was quiet when we got there at 11pm. Lina was out in the living room with Shivani’s older daughter Janvi and her husband who greeted us as we entered. Lina was busy crocheting a pink hat as Janvi was convinced it was going be a ‘baby sister’ (although they encourage no wearing of hats for newborn babies as there are many benefits to not having any barriers to the mother-baby connection).

I got my camera ready, checked my settings and nimbly walked myself to the dimly lit birth room where Shivani was in an inflatable pool filled with water and calming music and chants played on the speakers. Nhing (another midwife extraordinaire of JustLink) was kneeling beside the pool, checking baby’s heartbeat and encouraging Shivani through her surges.

This was my first birth ever but I’ve been reading so much and have watched so many birth videos, that it honestly felt like I’d experienced a hundred births already. I was a little nervous about getting good photographs but the experience itself seemed familiar.

Over the next two hours, I made myself as inconspicuous as I knew how, and photographed as quietly as possible. My introverted self was truly in her element.

Around 12:45, the midwives did a check to make sure all was okay and announced that the baby was crowning and it might do it well if mama changed position as baby’s heartbeat was dropping a little bit.

Soon after she did, Shivani breathed down and baby’s head made an appearance. Baby wanted to see everyone first thing so decided that it would come out heading facing up – occiput posterior, in medical terms. This position happens in about 10% of labours and as the baby’s spine is facing the mama’s spine, it can make labour quite painful for mama and Shivani did beautifully in this situation.

A few surges later, out came baby, Shivani reached down to pick the baby out of the water with Nhing’s help and Janvi, who was there all along announced, “Baby brother!”, just as he took his first breath.

Everyone was excited, Shivani’s mother banged a plate in the kitchen to announce the good news and baby, who seemed exhausted from the journey but oh-so-happy to be cuddling on mama’s chest was perfectly calm and contended.

Born at 1am on the dot on 10 June 2015, Arin was my first little client as a Birth Photographer and I am so honoured that I was there to experience his first moments outside the womb. His birth has strengthened my conviction to tell these stories and to use my gift as a photographer to tell the world this:

Birth is beautiful.

Birth is a miracle.

And we must do everything in our power to give women everywhere the right to not only have safe births, but gentle births. Empowering births.

One of my many varied and somewhat unusual interests is Birth. And whenever I start to talk about this, or folks come to our apartment and see Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth lying on the couch, or I post stuff about Birth on Facebook, I get suspicious looks and awkward questions…

“So, are you like, planning to have a baby?”

“Do you have news!?”

“Is there something you want to tell us?”

The answer is no.

Not yet.

I definitely want to have many babies (although even the thought of more than two causes the husband to start palpitating) and someday live on a farm (organic of course).

Just kidding about the last part. Kind of.

So yes, I’m interested in Birth. Yes, it’s because I want to have babies and I want to educate myself on what pregnancy and giving birth is really like but honestly, my interest in Birth has its roots in a much deeper place in me. A place that thirsts for truth and beauty and from what I have learnt so far (from the non-sensational sources), there’s a lot of truth and beauty to be found in Birth.

The workshop was a Waterbirth Workshop organised by a group of midwives serving in Mumbai (JustLink Health Services) and conducted by these two amazing women:

Barbara Harper (right) – Founder of Waterbirth International and Dianne Garland – Clinical Governance Director at Waterbirth International. These two women, over the course of 14 long hours in the basement of one of Mumbai’s best Childcare hospitals (Surya Childcare), totally blew my mind.

I was really nervous about the workshop because it’s been a pretty long time since I was in a learning environment and honestly, I wasn’t sure I would make it through two days of well… listening. I would also probably be the most unlikely student at this workshop (not a doctor, not a birth professional, not an expecting parent!) Also, dumb as this may sound, I thought I knew quite a bit about birth already from my reading and how much more stuff can there be to know?

Yeah, that last presumption was pretty dumb because the truth is that Birth is so freaking blow-your-mind beautifully complex and amazing that even after 14 hours of learning, I think we probably only touched the surface of this mystery. As Barbara closed off the workshop on Sunday evening, she asked, “so do you have any questions? Cause I could go on for days”. That coming from a woman with some 30+ years of midwifery experience pretty much says it all.

But I didn’t just take away a whole lot of knowledge that I previously lacked from this workshop. It really impacted me in a profound way which my husband will testify to because of course I came home at the end of both days, almost breathlessly narrating as much of it as I could to him. At the end of day two, I was so overwhelmed that I came home and cried. Not out of tiredness (which I was) or sadness (so many women are denied the experience of this beauty) but out of sheer reverence for the amazing design of birth. Birth is poetry, and dance, and music.

Birth is a reminder that there is purpose in everything and we only have to be still and trust.

I don’t want to go into too many details about the course but if there are five things that I want everyone to think about regarding Birth, they are:

1. Don’t trust media’s representation of birth. Media loves to hype things up and sensationalise everything. As Ina May puts it:

Commercial TV feeds on the sensational and the danger-charged moment. Women who have little real knowledge of what birth can be are especially vulnerable to the negative messages embedded in these dramas. Women and girls raised on this sort of thing without a source of more accurate knowledge learn to equate labour pain with danger. Pain is portrayed as if it could be fatal.

2. Each and every baby only gets ONE entrance into the world. We have to strive to make it a gentle and welcoming one. Childbirth has great significance on all parties but can have a lasting impact on the child’s life, even into adulthood.

3. “Childbirth is not a football match” – Barbara Harper

Women don’t need to be shouted at to PUSH and yelled at as if she is an athlete at the end of a race. Vaginas and the hormones of birth are shy. They need privacy and a calm environment to open up and guide the baby out.

4. Statistics for rising numbers of C-sections around the world are pretty horrific. In some places in India, more than half of all births are delivered by C-section which is shockingly higher than the WHO recommended 10-15%. C-sections are convenient and often more profitable for doctors but it’s major surgery which definitely should not be conducted unless absolutely necessary. Babies learn to express resilience and so many essential reflexes through naturally moving through the birth canal. Doctors are doing a grave injustice by denying them this chance and being dishonest to mothers about their real options.

Look out for ‘cascading interventions’. Induction by synthetic hormonal injections leads to more painful contractions which leads to epidurals, which leads to other interventions, which often end up in the C-section you really didn’t want. Ladies, trust your instincts and seek out care-providers who give you the time and attention you need!

5. Don’t fight gravity. This is probably the simplest fact about birth that started me off on this journey of learning about midwifery care and Birth. Gravity aids your body and the baby to move down the birth canal and yet hospitals usually want you laying in a bed, legs up in the air, pushing with all your force against gravity. Think about it.

BIG Thank You to JustLink Health Services (Lina Duncan, Nhing Castillo and Rekha Gurung) for organising this workshop! And of course the staff and doctors of Surya Childcare.

So looking forward to putting my photography skills to good use to change the negative messages of Birth perpetuated by media.