The fog of motherhood and why insurance always matters
My husband is an insurance broker. He loves his job, reads the small print on everything, and enjoys his daily office (and wfh) life. (And despite him loving his job, and him knowing the industry inside out, we still managed to go on a trip to India once without any travel insurance... but that is a story for another day). Insurance is never important until it is needed, but when it is needed, you want to have all the right things in place.
From the age of four months, our second son barely slept more than two/three hours at a time through the night. At its worst, I was awake every 45 minutes, feeding and reassuring our babe. The broken sleep broke us and we spent months in a daze, wondering which way was up. I think back to this time and I can't remember much happening - except moments of sheer panic and anxiety - due almost entirely to the lack of rest. I remember my first maternity leave with fondness (mostly, lockdown aside) but not the second one... So just imagine how reassuring it was to go through my phone recently and look over hundreds of photos from that time and see smiles, cuddles, days out, first foods being tasted and first steps being taken. The moments were there, they happened, they were documented - and I can reframe that time in my mind and know that it wasn't as bad as my memory would have me believe.
I have lots of reasons for why photography is important, but this first one is - Photography is insurance for your memories. we think we have a grip on time, that we will remember these moments for the rest of our lives, that we will never forget a face, a place... but we do. We forget things all the time, those magical moments fade as the years roll by and are replaced by more immediate happenings. Photographs bring those moments back, we are transported right to the time and place when the shutter was clicked, and we remember all over again. Watch the slideshow, print your images, make a photobook, and talk about that time your son fell into a swamp or ate all the strawberries from the bush in the garden, and keep those memories alive.
Oh and by the way... just over a year on - and illnesses aside - we are grateful that our son now puts in ten hour sleep shifts. He might still love an early start, but at least we're all getting a lot more rest now.
