The Cesarean Project; Sharing Unplanned Cesarean Birth Stories in Imagery to Create Healing Art

Many of you have read my birth stories or have heard them on The Birth Hour. My first daughter was born via unplanned cesarean section. Her birth was the opposite of what I had hoped and wanted for her to enter the world I wanted an empowered birth space, maybe water, definitely at the birth center. Instead, we were forced to induce, and one intervention led to another. Eventually my placenta abrupted and we were taken into the OR for an unplanned c-section. Instead of being empowered, I was scared, she was scared too! I lay on the table, she came out, she screamed and then she kept screaming - I wanted to SEE her and to hold her, but that didn’t happen. It was hard. Then facing the aftermath of healing from a cesarean birth after laboring for days with pitocin induced contractions, naturally. No sleep. Pain. The scar. The burning. Trying to breastfeed, but it hurt my scar, but she wanted only to breastfeed. Holding a pillow to my stomach to sit up, to cough, to laugh. Those days are a blur of pain and postpartum. But I had a lot of healing to do, physically and emotionally. It took years to work through it, although writing this still brings me to tears. I’ll never get her birth back, but it changed my life in ways that I didn’t know it would at the time, it opened doors and emotions for me that I had never tapped into.

Now I call her my muse.

I’ve always wanted to talk with other moms about their unplanned cesarean births and I want to make images with them that help to heal. Art from our scars - photos of love.

The Cesarean Project is working with women who are open and able to take real and raw images of themselves in an effort to feel empowered and beautiful with the body they now have. I encourage mamas to talk about their birth and how it felt throughout the photo session, and we dive deep into these emotions to create healing art.

These sessions are created for postpartum mamas to come to my in-home studio space. We spend about an hour taking photos and talking about your birth story. We might cry, we will definitely laugh and smile and it will be fun and healing.

The sessions are highly discounted - $125.