Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

To be upset at not having newborn pics of me

68 replies

Verbena37 · 25/03/2016 11:15

Until a few years ago, I hadn't really over thought about it in too much detail but I've been aware from a teen really that my parent's first baby pictures of me start from around 12 weeks.

Not a single newborn picture, not one.
Considering my grandfather took tonnes of pics of family.....before I was born and after, I'm surprised he hadn't taken any of me either. No relatives have any newborn pictures of me, I don't think.

My mum was given bed rest for pre eclampsia ten days before she had me and stayed in hospital for ten days after......as was the norm in the late 70's.

I've chatted to them about why they didn't have a camera (they said they probably didn't) for such a momentous occasion as a first baby birth and they just brush it off. However, there is a photo of my mum quote heavily pregnant with me in Scotland so someone took that and I had assumed it was my dad.

I'm pretty certain I'm not adopted as I look very much like my cousin and my grandparents on both sides but I find it strange that they had newborn pictures of my sister only two years later.

Is this rare do you think or is it common? Do lots of you have no newborn pics of yourselves? When I try to talk to my parents about it in a lighthearted "perhaps I'm adopted" type way, they laugh and brush it off as funny and that they hadn't really thought about newborn pictures. I just find it very odd.

OP posts:

UnderTheGreenwoodTree · 25/03/2016 12:08

I"m 45 and there are no newborn photos of me - I have an album of baby pics of me, but I look a few weeks/months old. I'd never really thought about it before.

IgnoreMeEveryOtherReindeerDoes · 25/03/2016 12:09

No pictures of me as a newborn or any of my my siblings no photos of my mum during any of her pregnancies either, earliest one of me is about 8 months.

Owllady · 25/03/2016 12:11

I'm the same age as you OP and there are no new born ones of me either, so it's not rare at all!

EweAreHere · 25/03/2016 12:13

Maybe they did take pictures but the roll of film was destroyed or lost? Pictures had to be dropped off/sent off for processing back then. Accidents did happen.

mayflyaway · 25/03/2016 12:14

There are only two pictures of me as an infant (both taken by my grandfather), maybe 10 in total of my preschool years & not many more than that until I was at secondary school. I'm 40, my parents didn't have/use a camera much - as was pretty common at that time.

I have four dc - my eldest is nearly 16 & we have far fewer pictures of her than the others .... we didn't have a digital camera until she was 2 or 3 & camera phones later than that. The obsessive need to photograph every-single-moment-of-life is fairly recent I think.

BertieBotts · 25/03/2016 12:16

In the 1970s pre eclampsia was a new awareness - people would have had recent memories of the horrifying effects of eclampsia, making that an extremely stressful time I should imagine. I think that photos would just have been a low priority because of the worry. If her preeclampsia had developed into full eclampsia she would have died, and you too, and not in a nice peaceful way.

Wolpertinger · 25/03/2016 12:16

Asked DH - who was a rare 70s homebirth. He says there is a photo of him cleaned up in his father's arms but no pic of him and his mother

I think both of our mums would have been of the impression you would want the baby washed and cleaned up and them to have a shower OK bath in the 70s. My mum certainly thinks skin to skin is weird.

Original poster

Verbena37 · 25/03/2016 12:17

Hmm, perhaps I'm over thinking it then.
I was born in 77.
Just asked my mum again on the phone and she said there honestly wasn't a conspiracy.....just that taking them in hospital didn't cross their mind and they knew what I looked like!
My dad and grandad visited every night and I double checked.....they both had cameras.
She did say the earliest one was probably around 8-12 weeks.
She said it was rather strange that they didn't have a newborn one.

I just find it sad I can't see what my face looked like as a newbie. It's only curiosity I guess. Mum did say she would double check the pics again from my nan and her brothers to see if there are any more that they took of me.

Thanks for your replies.

OP posts:

EllaHen · 25/03/2016 12:18

Think there's about 2 of me in my first year. Combination of 1970's norm and second child syndrome.

ClarenceTheLion · 25/03/2016 12:21

Normal situation for us oldies! I was thinking about this the other day. I have three photos of myself as a baby/toddler. I get at least three photos a day to my phone/on FB of my nieces and nephews! It's just a different time. Little ones now will probably be pissed off in 20/30 years that they have thousands of samey pictures to plough through when they want to pick a few out.

In your case, if your DM was unwell, perhaps that was your family's focus at the time? Not unreasonable really. I've never seen a newborn photo that was anything but boring anyway!

mayflyaway · 25/03/2016 12:22

I was born at home too - just mum (obviously), dad & the midwife - no camera so no pictures until my grandparents visited when I was 2 weeks old. The earliest photo of me is a posed one of me, mum & grandma ... it is beautiful & a treasure.

There is no way mum would have wanted a picture of her naked, labouring or covered in gunk (& I agree with her there!). She doesn't need a photo to remember & no-one who wasn't there needs to see one!

ButEmilylovedhim · 25/03/2016 12:23

I was in hospital for a month when I was born. It was mid seventies and there are no photos of me until I was home. My dad did have an interest in photography so would have had a camera. I think it's a shame and I would have loved to see myself as a newborn but I guess taking photos of baby in an incubator just wasn't the done thing then. I know my mum was very traumatised.

mayflyaway · 25/03/2016 12:25

(I also have to admit that my babies looked so similar that I have quite a few newborn photos where I'm not sure which baby it is - sometimes I can figure it out by the setting but often not - it doesn't help that they all wore the same clothes for the first 6 months)

Kelsoooo · 25/03/2016 12:25

Trust me, it's more hurtful when you realise there are no photo's of you aged 13-19 when cameras and phones were around all the time, and there are loads of your siblings.

Even more hurtful when you go to make a mothers day card and realise there are no photos of you with your mum despite being hundreds of her with your other siblings

/bitter.

LikeDylanInTheMovies · 25/03/2016 12:25

It was mid seventies

I guessed that from your username. I loved bagpuss.

kelper · 25/03/2016 12:28

My sister says this, but I'm the eldest and the first grandchild and there are 4 albums devoted to me i was born at the end of the 70s.
However my mum wasn't poorly after she had me, so they didn't have that worry.
Maybe they both struggled a bit after you were born and so there aren't loads of photos. Or maybe the ones they did take were no good, i remember having loads of issues with film cameras when I was a child

AcrossthePond55 · 25/03/2016 12:29

OP, I am adopted and my parents have lots of pics of me as a tiny baby (brought home at 2 wks old), so I don't think absence or presence of newborn pics means much. If you're curious, ask right out if you're adopted.

Family resemblance doesn't mean much, either, I was a dead ringer for my auntie as a child and as I reached my 50s my mum and I began to resemble each other. We do share some of the same ethnic background (Irish/Native American) so I suppose it isn't all that surprising. Auntie isn't my mum, she was married when I was born plus neither she nor my mum could have children.

Both my children were born in the 80s. DS1 has tonnes of baby pics but no video, DS2 doesn't have as many pics but he has loads of video.

FishWithABicycle · 25/03/2016 12:29

My dad worked in an industry related to photography and always had ready access to cameras film and developing services yet only one photo of me exists from under the age of one. It just wasn't part of the culture in the 70s.

Original poster

Verbena37 · 25/03/2016 12:30

Heehee, just had to go and check what my user name is . I'm actually 38 1/2.

OP posts:

Original poster

Verbena37 · 25/03/2016 12:33

My mum was fine after the birth. Wasn't that traumatic a birth other than epidural and forceps (mum was pretty fine about it) and was eating fish and chips and stout sneaked in by my dad coz the hospital food was so gross.

I didn't want a gunky newborn naked picture.....just me with my parents wrapped up etc. Something like that.
I've now emailed my Aunty to see if they took any because my cousin was only six weeks olde Rohan me so thought perhaps they had some.

OP posts:

Original poster

Verbena37 · 25/03/2016 12:34

Not sure what that last sentence said....older than me I think.

OP posts:

DotForShort · 25/03/2016 12:48

I was the youngest child in my family. By the time I arrived, my parents were probably too busy and exhausted to document my existence. I think the first pictures of me are at about 18 months, when I was clearly falling asleep. I look as though I'd been drugged. (Obviously, I hadn't been, I hasten to add.)

SylviaWrath · 25/03/2016 14:21

If yuo don't think forceps is traumatic then you obviously never had them!

It's a really odd leap from no newborn pic to maybe I'm secretly adopted.

TwentyCupsOfTea · 25/03/2016 14:27

I would say there are less than 40 or so photos from my entire childhood - im in my early/mid twenties. I know babies know which that many on day one. You are being a bit U, what would the photos change?

MeMySonAndl · 25/03/2016 14:43

Those were other times, your dad would have been out smoking cigars with his friends after spending the night in a waiting area of the hospital with other dad's to be.

Your mum would have been mortified at having pictures taken of her at that time, even her friends would have respected that and wouldn't suggest otherwise, while she was unable to spray her hair into place and apply copious amount of make up.

You would have been asleep in a room full of "baby in a small cot" clones, your aunts would said you were beautiful, not able to be sure what baby they were talking about (or if it was indeed the right baby)

If you were born in the 1970s, the chances of you being photographed as a newborn are practically nil. For starters, most babies didn't even opened their eyes until days after the birth.

Flip

1 2 3