One mom with high expectations for hospital photos with her newborn was a bit ... let down by her husband's camerawork.
"Pictures I wanted my husband to get during labor and delivery (and) what I got," Taylor Silva captioned a recent TikTok video with more than 2M views. “It’s the wet rag on my forehead for me, lol.”
The first half features photos of pregnant and postpartum women smiling through labor or holding their newborns looking refreshed and relaxed.
The next images show Silva in the intensive stages of labor with a wet rag on her forehead and after birth, holding her daughter, Kennedy, who was born in January 2022. In the last image, Silva is seated in a wheelchair gulping coffee before she leaves for the hospital with her baby.
"I didn't bring any makeup to the hospital but I wasn't expecting to look that bad," Silva tells TODAY.com. "I wasn't trying to be a glam girl but I wanted to look presentable. I wish I had brushed my hair."
"I wasn't trying to be a glam girl but I wanted to look presentable. I wish I had brushed my hair."
Silva's husband was in charge of taking photos and texting them to their respective families who were not allowed in the delivery room due to COVID policies. Silva says she was "out of it" while her husband snapped away.
"I was in labor for 43 hours so by the time I pushed, I was out of gas," she says. "It was the worst and best day of my life because I was in so much pain."
TikTok appreciated the images.
"I got a bunch of double chin pics and (one) of me in a diaper," "Seriously relatable" and "Ugh, this a universal thing," wrote her followers.
Other moms shared their post-birth horror stories.
"My husband got one of me going through a contraction and I look so red — he has it on display in a slideshow for everyone to see," one wrote.
"Mine took a pic of me holding the baby on my lap, boob almost out, blood all over my gown from when the cord spurted when they cut it. Even my baby looked terrible. Then he emailed it to EVERYONE he knew."
"My face was so bloated with all the IV fluids. My father-in-law sent (a) pic out of me ... to his entire company."
A few commenters urged Silva to embrace the beautiful reality.
"Let’s normalize that it’s messy and exhausting," one person wrote. "All those other pictures are staged," added a follower. "Yours is real and wonderful!"
Many had well-intentioned partners who skip a mom's right to photo approval. "And he probably sees not one issue with the ones he took," wrote someone.
Several moms said they didn't have any hospital photos.
"Well at least you got pictures, my husband stood across the room and made comments like, 'Oh my God this is so gross' and 'When are we eating?'" one recalled.
At first, Silva was rattled by the images — "I said, 'These are terrible but of course, thank you for getting them'" — but she has a sense of humor.
"My husband did the best he could," she says. "I wouldn't trade these photos for the world."
Silva's husband might have a shot at redemption.
"After my second baby," she says, "I will make a comeback video."