Thanks from Canada, Allison!

I'm really excited to finally share the project that has kept me from drawing for Bus Blog lately. A year ago sometime after James was conceived I joined an online community of pregnant women all due in April 2012. Since then our cross-Canada network has grown to 132 mothers.

A couple of weeks ago one of us shared Florida mom Allison Tate's blogpost about the importance of making sure mothers put themselves in photographs with their kids. One mom, Deshe, uploaded a photo of herself with her son and it sparked a rush of photos from the others. Like Allison Tate's readers, many of us discovered with surprise that we had few or no pictures of ourselves with our kids (six months in I have only three photos of myself with both Ada and James!). After the fortieth or fiftieth picture flew by, I realised I needed to bring these pictures together. The collage above is the result.

For many of us, the Birth Club is a safe place, an honest place. There we can chew over parenting and homemaking techniques without being boring, talk intimately about our changed bodies without being offensive, and share sappy videos, caustic jokes and every tiny milestone our beloved and bewildering children reach with an ever-caring audience.

I love looking at these pictures. Most of the photos on here aren't professional and I know many of us in the Birth Club lament that. We wish we had looked better that day. But the love in these faces is incredible. It makes us more beautiful, or it illuminates the beauty already there. As I get older, I don't enjoy 'good' photographs as much as I used to. Most of the work of professional photographers is so stylish and beautiful, capturing us always at our best. They're pieces of lovely art. But the photos where it's just us and our feelings shining through, warts and all, those are my favourites.