A Lamb is Born: Birth Photography of Another Kind

I love photographing birth. It’s my favorite genre. The power, the exhilaration, the gamut of tiny moments of profundity and mundanity on the way to a new life coming true. I am deeply in favor of individual choice, but know this: every baby is a miracle and being there to see them born is my greatest joy. So you can imagine my sorrow with most hospitals not allowing more than just one accompanying person right now and you can imagine my longing to shoot something being born. That’s why February is extra exciting at Slough Farm: the ewes are lambing!

Watching another animal labor reveals the instinct that all birthing creatures draw on. Here is Bindi, one of Slough’s lambs, at work.

Watching these ewes watching me watching her, they felt like friends there to support the work.

With humans in labor, there are many more reliable markers of time (and typically much more intervention to discover that), like the measure of dilation and the common language we can call upon . With a sheep and an uneducated observer like myself, I chose the exact wrong moment to need to leave for my own baby’s needs.

But on my return, Glimmer was out and ready to roll. Or at least ready to teeter and gambol with a bleat. And, honestly, what’s cuter than a lamb, less than an hour old? Even my 5 year old extols their adorableness (“The baby lambs are so cute I can’t stop watching them! They’re cuter than my baby sister!”)

And just like a human birth, I can’t stop marveling at the next parts, too. Time for cleaning, time for meeting, time for the mammalian pursuit of teat hunting.