In 2022 my daughter Elowen was born and needed emergency care caused by extreme and unexpected blood loss. She was taken to the NICU and I spent hours alone unsure whether she was even alive. Elowen went on to full recovery but the void left by our separation remained. This work began 2 years later.

Told through portraits of mothers & their children, The Hardest Hue To Hold is a new photographic project that explores the stories of mothers unable to hold their children in the hour after birth, commonly known as the Golden Hour.

The Golden Hour in neonatology was adopted from adult trauma management where the first 60 minutes after an injury is seen as the most crucial in determining a person’s outcome. Reframed as the crowing finale of a ‘good’ birth, there is a heavy focus throughout pregnancy on this time as crucial for maximizing the bonding between mother and child. We are told that uninterrupted skin-to-skin reduces stress, regulates temperature & blood sugars, establishes successful breastfeeding & has a lasting impact on an infant’s long-term outcome. 

With little room for traumatic birth stories in the Western narrative of birth, women’s stories are pushed under the carpet. Mothers go home without photographs of their newborns on their chests. With the growth of the birth-education industry, it is nearly impossible to escape the narrative that ‘positive birth’ is one with as little medical intervention and as much skin-to-skin as possible and this often leads to feelings of immense guilt and failure.

This body of work is currently ongoing and brings light to the stories of mothers who, for many reasons, were also unable to have that experience.  Please check back later in 2024 for updates.

Note: The title ‘The Hardest Hue to Hold’ is inspired by Robert Frost’s 1923 poem Nothing Gold can Stay.