About

I became a mother to a beautiful baby boy in August of 2025. I prepared many months for the experience of delivering my first baby only to encounter the excact opposite of what I had planned, an emergency c-section after a list of other interventions. Although I ended up with a healthy baby and was recovering well physically from the surgery, I still grieved the birth that I had envisioned and struggled with replaying moments in my head, wishing I had done things differntly.

A month postpartum, I decided to draw a portrait of myself holding my son. This process was incredibly healing for me and made me appreciate his birth, our relationship, and that special moment together captured in the photo, despite the bandages and tubes attached to my son.

Vanessa Varjian is an artist living and working in Brookfield, Massachusetts.