Postnatal Portraits
An 'after birth' library.
There is a great emphasis - informally, professionally and on social media - on pregnancy and the ‘birth stories’ that follow. There is much less focus on honest narratives from the longer-lasting chapter of postnatal life - those first weeks, months and beyond with your new baby. This means that mothers, fathers and parents might feel less informed, prepared or open to the myriad of feelings and experiences that the postpartum entails.
Postnatal Portraits has been created to be an accessible library to host real stories: frank, raw and candid accounts, reflections and deep dives from parents of newborns. A place to share and normalise the thoughtful, weird, sad, wonderful, joyful, testing and mundane moments that take place in the postpartum.
It’s a chance for parents to take the time to debrief about those initial months with a newborn and tune in to how it felt and how it shaped them as a parent.
It’s a platform to offload postnatal experiences and provide reassurance to other parents who might share your lived reality; to support parents-to-be to consider the support that they might need once their baby is here and to equip other readers with conversation starters to support a family member or friend who's recently entered or re-entered parenthood.
It’s a space to publicly share your words to a nodding crowd or to anonymously voice your unsaid story and represent a thousand silent voices who are grateful to read and feel heard in your words.
This is a kind, curious, supportive space where contributors can be vulnerable in their reflections and readers are supportive, affirming and warm in their response.
We encourage support for contributors and their stories from their peers in the comments.
We especially welcome parents to get in touch to share your postnatal experiences - this could be in a spoken or written format, or we’d love to offer you a Q&A chat if there’s a topic that you’d like to explore in a conversation.
Postnatal Portraits is free for subscribers - with fortnightly posts - while we get an idea of traction and feedback from contributors and readers alike.
Please subscribe, share and reach out to have your words added to our Postnatal Portraits library.
