Jacqueline De Freitas Leal, The Beginning of Life (DOCO 2022)

Me and my sister have always been very close, best friends . I live in Australia and she lives in Brazil. After 3 years without seeing my family, my sister and brother in law invited me to be with them during their childbirth for emotional support. They told me that if I wanted to, I could photograph the labor and birth. I normally photograph landscapes and the ocean, and the fact that we were talking about my sister made me extremely emotional. I didn't know if I was mentally prepared to be there with them and for them. As a mother myself, I know how challenging and painful this moment can be, but at the same time, is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. It was hard to see my sister in labor for over 30 hours, the amount of pain, made me shake, I felt like fainting many times and sometimes I just had so many tears in my eyes that I couldn't press the button to shoot. To document the whole process that so many women go everyday from the " ideal labor" expectations to what can unexpectedly be, and from being there for her when she cried because after so many hours she would have to go into surgery, to seeing them in the moment they became parents was a miracle. To see my nephew transitioning from life in the womb to life in this world was a miracle. The same miracle all of us reading this have been through, the beginning of life.

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