9 Months (2022-present)

9 Months

Ongoing, in the filming stage. 

I am surrounded by a lot of loved ones who have been pregnant and given birth. After they have given birth, and you go to meet the baby, and you ask them how they are, they might say "I'm good. I'm tired, but I'm good. Giving birth was wild." Perhaps they share a truncated version of their overwhelming experience. They are in the throes of exhaustion, a complete hormonal shift, recovering from major surgery. They are wearing diapers and changing another's diaper, they have life-giving milk coming out of their bodies or they are worried they don't have this milk. They have recently been separated from something that has grown in their body for about 9 months (more like 10, it turns out). There is no time or space for them to actually articulate the trauma and the elation that they have experienced in being pregnant and giving birth. 

In this video work, I will be interviewing my loved ones who have given birth, while documenting my own journey through pregnancy and birth with all of its potential ups and downs. There are two elements at play in this piece. In one part, this will be a fact-finding mission for myself as I go through my own experience of trying to get pregnant, and a tool for others in the same position. In another part, I want to give my loved ones the opportunity to talk about their experiences of pregnancy and birth and give them the chance to digest and share their journeys or pregnancy and birth.