Childbirth

// First Breath Photography

By Ben Cheney .
11.02.08 // Childbirth

A Radical Birthing Magazine interview with Gerard Bonî of First Breath Photography.

Radical Birth Magazine: Tell us about First Breath Photography and how it all began.

Gerard Bonî: I used to be a wedding photographer.  It was great.  I sold insurance during the week, and then used the weekends to shoot the most amazing declarations of love you have ever seen.  I always used to say that the equipment I used the most wasn’t my camera, but my box of tissues.  So beautiful.

Anyway, one weekend I shot a rush wedding for a couple who had just found out that they had gotten knocked up.  They wanted to get married before the bride began to, well, swell.  I was really busy at the time, but I understood their situation and took the job.  Thank goodness I did — it changed my life forever.  They loved the wedding photos so much that they asked me if I would photograph the delivery of their little bastard baby.  At first I was a little unsure.  I had never seen a baby come out of a lady.  But they seemed so excited about having professional pictures of the baby’s head crowning that my emotions got the best of me and I accepted.  I will never forget that birth.  It was more beautiful than any wedding — it was the beginning of life.

So here I am, five years later, President and CEO of First Breath Photography.  I don’t sell insurance anymore.  First Breath Photography is my full-time job.  Babies are being born all the time, and they usually don’t make appointments.  I have to be available to my clients at all hours of the day and night.  This is not a game, it’s serious business.  Women in labor are no joke.

RBM: That sounds like a truly amazing story.  I can imagine you have a lot more stories.  Can you tell us about your most memorable birthing experience?

GB:  Oh wow.  It’s really hard for me to pick just one story.  I shoot all sorts of births — traditional births, silent births, underwater births, impromptu births, c-section births, multiple births, home births, etc.  So, as you can imagine, I have had the opportunity to shoot some really unique things.

There was one time in 2005, I was driving to my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving when I saw a car stranded on the side of I-81.  There wasn’t an exit for several miles, and it looked like the battery was dead.  So, I decided to stop and see if I could help.  When I pulled up I saw a pair of lady legs popping out of the backseat and a man standing in between said legs with his head in the car.  I immediately thought they were creating life when I saw that the woman wasn’t wearing any underpants.  But then I saw the man had his pants on and the lady’s “area” was way too large to be normal.  When I got out of my car, the man yelled for help and asked if I was a doctor because his wife was in labor.  And that’s the last thing I remember.  I guess I just switched into First Breath Photography mode because when I came to I had a camera full of beautiful on-the-side-of-the-road birthing pictures.  It turned out to be one of the most touching births I have ever experienced.  Everything was unique.  From the father cutting the umbilical cord with a plastic Wendy’s spork to the bag of unmentionable discharges left on the side of the rode like a cigarette butt.  It was perfect.

RBM: You said you were on the way to your grandma’s house.  Does your family know what you do?  And if so, how involved are they with your hopes and dreams for First Breath Photography?

GB: My mom thinks I’m crazy.  My grandma pretends she doesn’t understand.  And my dad doesn’t talk to me anymore.  I see him all the time, he just won’t talk.  So, needless to say, they were much happier when I was shooting weddings.

RBM: What about your wife?  How does she feel about First Breath Photography?

GB: I don’t have a wife anymore.  That was how she felt about it.

RBM: Well that’s a shame.

GB: Yeah.

RBM: The idea of having a stranger photograph the birth of your child may intimidate some couples.  What would you say to all those expecting couples out there that are reading this?

GB: First Breath Photography tries to reduce the awkwardness as much as possible.  In most cases a full interview and consultancy takes place during the second trimester.  I tell the couple about myself, my family, and my own birth.  I then get to know them and we discuss the rules and regulations of the photography.  Some couples don’t want any direct shots, just profiles and such.  But then there are others who want me to get as close to the action as I can.  It really depends on the couple.  Full on baby coming out of lady shots are not for everyone and I try to respect that.

First Breath Photography is not about destroying a woman’s birthing experience by shoving a camera lens in her face.  When I shoot I am as discrete as possible.  I have periscopes and other tools that allow me to be practically invisible, while still getting the best shots possible.

First Breath Photography is about encapsulating the childbirth experience through beautiful and candid photographs.  It is my dream to shoot as many births as I can.  I love it that much.

RBM:  Gerard, thank you for speaking with Radical Birthing Magazine today about First Breath Photography.  It certainly shows that you love what you do and have a strong passion for childbirth.

GB: I certainly do!  Thank you!

View Comments / Nov 02.08 / Childbirth / by Ben Cheney

// Childbirth

By Husayn Raza .
11.01.08 // Childbirth

polygamy or adoption?

man, i’m shallow.

View Comments / Nov 01.08 / Childbirth / by Husayn Raza

// Blommit Birth

By Kyle Wai Lin .
10.31.08 // Childbirth

View Comments / Oct 31.08 / Childbirth / by Kyle Wai Lin

// Childbirth

By Jordan Childs .
10.30.08 // Childbirth

View Comments / Oct 30.08 / Childbirth / by Jordan Childs

// Now and Then

By Tristan Smith .
10.29.08 // Childbirth

You will hear crying.

You will hear screaming and grunting.

You will hear the firm commands of a doctor, your own voice urging her on.

And when it is placed in your arms, you will hear a small snap; a barely audible pop that’s almost more of a tiny vibration than an actual noise.

That is the sound of your mind being cleaved in two.
That is the sound of you never being the same again.

The birth of a child seems like a routine event.  After all, it is how every single person that has ever existed has ever existed.  It happens thousands of times per day all over the world.  But on an individual level, I think there is something that is impossible to grasp before it happens.  When they actually put that pile of new cells into your arms, it dawns on you that you are holding a fresh soul, one that you created.

You now own for the only one of something.  The only one that will ever exist.  And you are entirely responsible for its health and success.

I think when confronted with these alarming cosmic truths, our typically material minds cannot handle the strain.  The fissure is so severe that a psyche never goes back to its old ways.  We never think our old thoughts again.  Not seriously.

I’m not rallying against this.  I’m not explaining how beautiful and meaningful it is.  I’m only letting you all know that I’m aware of it.  I’m going to be thinking about it the day I try and conceive a son.

The fact that this is the end.  We’re never going back.

View Comments / Oct 29.08 / Childbirth / by Tristan Smith

// What if the type of sex your parents had when they conceived you determined the type of person you would be?

By Joey Camire .
10.28.08 // Childbirth

Some might think it odd, but when I think of child birth its not the things you might assume that come to mind. I don’t think of water breaking.  I don’t think of the woman losing control of her bowels during childbirth (which is very common).  And, unlike Tom Cruise, I don’t think of making pizza with the placenta (though here is a recipe I found online http://www.twilightheadquarters.com/placenta.html).

The truth is when I think of childbirth, my thoughts wander back to when the child was conceived.  That passionate, missionary style, before she falls asleep, once a week kind of love.

That got me thinking… What if the type of sex your parents had when they conceived you determined the type of person you would be?  Think about that for a second.  No not your parents.  Use someone else as an example, don’t be gross.  What type of fucked up sex are people having to make some of the people you come across everyday.

I’ve decided to look at peoples personalities, and try to go back in time to figure out what kind of sex their parents were having when they were conceived.  I was going to start with myself to be fair, but due to an awful car ride with my mom and an ex-girlfriend, I know I was conceived on Valentines Day 1984 when my mom didn’t wear her diaphragm as a gift to my dad.  I’ve never been the same.

Ben Cheney

Ben is extremely detail oriented.  He loves music, god, and cheap wine.
His conception:  His dad had just finished a long week of work.  He wanted to unwind so on the way home he picked up a couple of bottles of Boone’s Farm.  After polishing off several bottles, he was feeling the effects of the wine.  He fingered through his record collection and found it,  “God Loves You From The Inside: a compilation of the greatest christian love songs of 1983”.  He dropped the needle on “God Invented Missionary For A Reason”, and got completely naked.  Ben’s mother walked into the living room to find Ben’s father butt naked singing along “if God wanted you to do it that way, then why is it called doggy style?”  He laid her down on the carpet and gave it to her at exactly 30 TPMs (thrusts per minute) for a full three minutes, just the way she likes it.  That’s why Ben is the way he is.

Now not all cases are this involved.  Some are much more simple to figure out. Lets look at another example.

Alex Aloise

Alex is OBSESSED with wrestling.
His Conception:  His father gave his mother the pile driver.  Here is a diagram.

Robert Downy Jr.

His parents were going through a role playing stage… And a heroin stage.

John Stewart

His father hated himself and his mother thought that was funny, then they had sex.

Sarah Palin

Her parents were teachers, and they never mixed work with pleasure.

Ashlee Simpson

Her mom faked it.

Chuck Norris

Immaculate Conception

Paris Hilton

Her parents were trying out erotic asphyxiation, unfortunately they cut off oxygen to the egg and sperm too, integral to brain development.

Chris Rock

Hate Sex

Mel Gibson

Good old drunk sex in a church.

Daniel Craig

He was conceived on a floating bed made of wool above an erupting volcano while Marvin Gay’s lets get it on played after a his parents fed each other chocolate covered habanero peppers in the middle of the summer.  (god he is hot)

Snoop Dogg

Doggy Style baby.  Like you didn’t see that one coming.

You get the idea so go and try this out for yourself.  Share your examples if you have some, they make me giggle.

View Comments / Oct 28.08 / Childbirth / by Joey Camire

// Grand Misconceptions in Sherwood Forest

By Charles Hodges .
10.28.08 // Childbirth

I remember the first birth I ever saw. They fed the mother-to-be some whiskey.  They put a stick in her mouth.  And she made a face that looked like she was releasing a bowel movement the size of the Houston civic center.

Never mind that I was only seven years old.  Never mind that I was seeing this surrounded by strangers.  Never mind that this was the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves starring Kevin Costner.

None of that matters.  No, I was seeing childbirth for the first time and when they held up the blueberry alien that supposed to be a child, I was appalled.

Walking out of the theater, the caramel from my milk duds still stuck in my teeth, I asked my mom:

“Is it true mother?  Do children really come out of buttholes?”

When I got home from church on Sunday my father summoned me to the living room.  I sat down.

He told me that we needed to have a talk.  I asked him if we could go play basketball.

He said he wanted to tell me about how babies were born.  I told him I wanted to go play basketball.

After numerous attempts to leave, he finally settled me down and handed me a book called How Babies Are Born.

Then he left.

It was just me in the living room.  Just me and How Babies Are Born.  Just me, How Babies are born and the living room.

Wanting to put off reading this book at all costs I started to look around the room that I had been in all of four times in my entire life.  My three-year old portrait hung over the mantle.  My brother’s was to the left.  There were fake pinecones on top of a table and an antique clock that didn’t work resting on top of books that no one read.  The carpet was spotless and everything was stiff as if the room’s lack of human interaction had resulted in rigor mortis.

I had never known the purpose for this room.  Before today, I thought it was just a place to have conversations with the geriatric – a room void of technology that wouldn’t confuse people who wanted to talk about when cars didn’t have seatbelts and that one time they saw the president on the back of train.

But there I was.  Sitting in my family’s own little funeral room holding a book titled How Babies are Born.  Since seven year olds do not appreciate irony, my soul was flushed with unnamable awkwardness when I contemplated the notion of handing my father the book back.

I played the scene out in my head.

I would walk back in the kitchen hand him the book.  They would ask if I read it.  I would say yes.  Then, a giant monster would come out of the disposal in the sink and consume my family.

I would walk back in the kitchen hand him the book.  They would ask if I read it.  I would say yes.  Then, the oven would start sucking our house into an airless vacuum.

I would walk back in the kitchen hand him the book.  They would ask if I read it.  I would say yes.  Then, I would explode.

How could I get away from this?

“I just won’t read the book,” I thought.  That way nothing bad can happen.  I could just walk in the kitchen, hand them the book and say, “yeah, I know what happens.  You hike into the woods, put a stick in a girl’s mouth and a baby comes out of a butthole.  Big deal.  Dad, I didn’t even need that book.  I have seen Robin Hood you know.”

But something in my mind told me that there was a reason I was in this room.  Something told me that maybe, even though I was seven, I might not have all the answers.

So I looked at the book.  What struck me first were the illustrations, done in colored pencil and charcoal.  The major color scheme can best be remembered as “pretty much magenta”.  It was very eighties.  None of the characters had faces.  It was just vague sketches of figures seamlessly intertwined with captions that talked about how it all went down.

It walked me through the steps.  I saw the faceless colored-pencil man dash in and out of scenes.  The faceless colored-pencil woman was always wearing some kind of toga.  I couldn’t really tell what was going on.  Magenta.  Everywhere.

Finally, after painfully careful language set up the scene, faceless colored-pencil man knocked up faceless colored-pencil woman.

Although I wasn’t sure the exact biology that was involved in the interaction, now, I was pretty sure that you didn’t need a stick or whiskey to get a woman pregnant.

The book wasn’t exactly clear, but I did take mostly positive lessons away from it.

On the last page it had a picture of an infant, with its nose and eyes barely visible.  It said, “and this is what happens when two people love each other.”  I remember thinking to myself, “at least their baby is going to have a face.”

View Comments / Oct 28.08 / Childbirth / by Charles Hodges

// Child Birth: Bewwwtiful

By Alex Aloise .
10.27.08 // Childbirth

I watch a lot of movies. A lot. Probably too many. A good number of those are horror movies, movies whose only redeeming value is the quality of their gore scenes.  I’ve seen some serious, albeit fully-simulated, shit. I watched one last week where a guy was cooked alive under an array of heat lamps. I watched him blister to death.  I’ve seen people eaten alive, disemboweled, dismembered, you name it.  Through it all I’ve developed a pretty strong stomach.  There’s not much that can really shock me or gross me out, as long as I know it’s all just a movie.

But child birth, as beautiful a thing as it is, gives me a heepin’ helpin’ of the heebie-jeebies.  There’s so much juice involved.  There’s blood and amniotic fluid.  The baby comes out misshapen and covered in raspberry preserves.  There’s all that screaming.  And then, to top it all off, somehow poop usually gets involved to provide one final sprinkling of yuck to the whole process.

Somehow in my life, I’ve had three separate people show me the births of their children.  To be honest, I had a more enjoyable time watching the Zapruder Film (you can’t get too graphic on 8mm).  I don’t know why they felt so compelled to share that particular moment in their life with me (or in two of the three cases, the rest of my classmates as well), but what’s done is done and I can’t erase the visions from my mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids, and I’m genuinely looking forward to the day when I have my own.  But I guarantee you, on the actual day of birth, I’ll be standing at the head of the bed.  My hat goes off to the doctors, and other fathers, who are brave enough to get right down in “the business” while the whole thing is happening.

What goes through their minds at a time like that?  Are their stomachs churning as much as mine would be?  Are they fully equipped: gloves, smock, shower cap, etc?  What happens if their protective gear rips?  Imagine you’re in position, ready to catch that kid, you look down and there’s a huge split down the middle of your rubber glove.  Do you buckle down and accept your slimy fate, or do you find a last-minute relief catcher?  What if something squirts out during one of those final pushes, right as you’re face-to-front-door with the mother of your child?  Do you wipe?  Is there time to wipe, or do you just sit there with a face full of membrane?  What if in all the commotion you didn’t even notice?  Does the doctor tell you you’ve got wife on your chin, or does everyone in the room just awkwardly keep mum about it, like when your date has lipstick on her teeth?

I realize this is all coming off as being exceptionally shallow but these are my sincere concerns about the birthing process.  At this point in my life I can’t bring myself to worry about the health and safety of all those involved.  That stuff is too heavy for my mind to comprehend at this juncture.  No, right now my main query about the miracle of life is whether or not club soda will get placenta off my shoes.

View Comments / Oct 27.08 / Childbirth / by Alex Aloise