NEW DELHI: Caesarean or normal, Urshita Saini's parents ask her when she leaves for work with her kit. It's a question that the 26-year-old Delhi resident has got used to, for it deals with her field of work. But here's the catch – Saini is not a doctor, delivering children.
She is busy clicking mothers in the throes of labour – and taking the first pictures of the infant's entry into the world. She is a birth photographer.
For the last five months, Saini, one of the very few specialising in this field in the country, has been capturing images of a child being born.
A hit among sections of people in the West, child birth photography is still to grab eyeballs in India. But increasingly, people are seeking to record those unforgettable moments of labour and birth.
"These photographs capture the varied emotions of the mother from that of excruciating pain to the immense happiness she gets just after the baby is born," Saini told PTI.
For a while now, fathers are being allowed into operation theatres (OT) to be with their partners during childbirth.
Some doctors also allow the process to be photographed, as long as the medical process is not disturbed. Dr Anita K Mohan, gynaecologist, Fortis Hospital, said it was "perfectly fine" for a photographer to click pictures, but there were some dos and don'ts that had to be followed.
"Photographers must be silent spectators and their photography should not hinder the free movement of medical personnel in the operation area," she said.
Saini said her pictures "reveal a mystery", as they tell the story of what happens inside the OT and labour rooms.
"You get pictures of your baby's heartbeat, doctor putting the tag, wrapping the baby with a towel," said Saini, a member of the International Association of Professional Birth Photographers (IAPBP).
Saini found about this concept only when she was asked to write an article on maternity and new-born shoots in India by a magazine.
"I was shocked to know that nothing has been done on birth photography in India. It's sad that the country producing babies every second of the day does not have anything to show on birth photography. This is what actually egged me on to take the matter in my hands," she said.
However, the task of convincing a woman's family to allow her to capture these extremely private moments, Saini said, was "laborious", to say the least.
"A lot of convincing had to go into this. While the grandfather would wonder why we needed to capture somebody screaming in pain, the grandmother would say, 'We cannot show the baby to anyone outside for 40 days'," she said.
For Saini, who used to nurture her aesthetic sense by clicking happy photographs of fat Indian weddings, the very first assignment came as an eye-opener.
She had watched YouTube videos on child birth, and thought she was prepared for it. "But these videos show you just one angle while the real thing is 20 people rushing around, where one is getting cotton, the other bringing scissors, the third one putting up glucose - and in all that chaos the baby is out," she said.
But she managed to capture the right moment, she said, comparing her job with someone sent to do war photography.
Saini, who was once asked to leave the OT because of an emergency, said she never stepped out of the "lakshman rekha" drawn by doctors.
"We also wear scrubs and gloves, and our equipments are sterile," she said. As the infant's eyes are very sensitive, the use of flash is prohibited inside the OT and labour room, she added.
Saini, who has done over 20 birth shoots till now, said parents and grand-parents of the baby were mostly happy with the photographs.
In one case, the baby's grand-mother insisted that Saini be paid more than what she charged because the granny loved the pictures.
"Initially when we were told about this concept, my wife and I were very happy, but our parents were hesitant. However, when Urshita showed her work to us, they also came on board," said Rajan (name changed), one of her clients.
"I am happy that we made this choice."