Why It’s Hard to Take Pictures of Newborns

<div>When you can’t write, make lists

Despite my firm conviction that each of my
children has been the most beautiful creature ever (love that combination of
hormones and sleep deprivation that has such an effect on my aesthetics) as
evidenced by the amazing amount of time I can spend just gazing rapturously at
their little faces, I have very few satisfying pictures of any of them,
especially in the first few weeks. But I have a few good hypotheses as to
why:

10. So few moments when they’re
awake, not nursing, and not screaming.
9.
Synesthesia — we think we like looking at babies, but I have watched countless
women lean over to admire Rainer and — inconspicuously — sniff him. So until
the invention of scratch’n'sniff polaroids or some olfactory equivalent of the
camera, no picture is really going to be
satisfying.
8.The Jabba the Hut effect of not
really having a neck that will support your
head.
7. The photographer who has eyes so
bleary she can’t tell whether the picture is in focus or
not.
6. When said newborn has three adoring
older siblings, the backs of their heads often appear between the baby’s face
and the camera.
5. Often the best time to
take a picture is when the older siblings have all been consigned to bed. But
even on the longest of Texas summer days, this will be after sunset and thus
necessitate a flash, leaving the newborn looking startled and washed out and
just not pretty.
4. It is very easy for a
tired parent to tell herself that having four boys who look more or less like
each other, really, my main concern is just getting a couple of nice shots of
every age. Later I can print out a set for each boy and tell him they’re all
him (would I really lie to my children?) Besides, Jenny is learning Photoshop
and I’m sure she can help me edit in a little hair on the pictures of
Rainer.
3. When attachment parenting means
nearly constant physical contact with the baby, and in our house, he really is
safest in his sling, it’s very hard to get far enough away to focus a camera on
him. Our motto seems to be “Babies are meant to be held if you want anyone else
to be heard.”
2. Someone keeps losing the
camera, I mean, trying to hide it from S�ren, who is dying to release his
inner Ansel Adams.
1. The moments when my
Rainer is alert and happy and I am able to give him my undivided attention are
pretty special, so sometimes taking a picture is the last thing I want to do,
and it is only because I want to share them with some of the other people he is
lucky enough to have love him as well as preserve them for some future version
of him that we will be unable to believe was ever this small that I do it at
all.