Sitter session portraits with six-month-old Ektoras

Ektoras was three weeks old before his proud dad was able to cuddle him for the first time.

“I had seen him from afar, and it felt so good to finally hold him,” Leo told me. Leo loved how tiny he was, his little ‘brioche feet’ and tiny fingers as his new baby clung to him.

So why the delay to pick him up and bond skin-to-skin? On the day before his son’s arrival, Leo felt a strange sensation in the skin on one side of his face. He couldn’t sleep and it was 2am in the UK, so he called some of his Brazilian doctor friends who were still awake. They suggested painkillers, antibiotics and antihistamines, so Leo found some of each in the bathroom cabinet and took them.

The next day, the tingle turned into pain that continued deep into his teeth. He’d been to the dentist only a few months previously, so didn’t think it was a dental problem. Nevertheless, something more urgent was happening. Agni, Leo’s wife, felt her waters break. 

Leonardo dosed up on painkillers and focused on supporting his wife through labour. By the time baby arrived, Leo’s face had broken out, and he didn’t want to risk passing on anything to the baby by holding him.

The new family went home and Leo fell into a deep, exhausting sleep. Finally, he was diagnosed with shingles. The strange sensation and broken skin was climbing close to his eye, and he learned there was a risk of blindness if it proceeded further.

To add to the complications, Agni was finding breastfeeding difficult and little Ektoras was suffering from jaundice. Agni looked from her sick husband to her sick son and felt hopeless and alone. Thankfully, support was in sight.

With Leo half-dead to the world, his wife recovering from childbirth and adjusting to life as a new parent and a pandemic causing chaos outside the family home, the couple’s friends stepped in.

As you can read from Agni and Leo’s maternity shoot blog, the couple are very involved in the Oxford Capoeira Community. They’ve also joined an African dance community, too, and become good friends with people from both.

These friends collected medicine for Leo. They grouped together to buy a voucher for COOK ready-meals, which provided sustenance for the couple for those super-tough first three weeks. They even delivered toilet rolls to the couple, on the same day Leo and Agni (and all the supermarkets around them) ran completely out.

This couple are full of fun, life and energy. I can’t begin to imagine how tough it must’ve been for Leo to be stuck in bed, watching his child from afar, unable to help his wife. I can’t imagine how Agni must’ve felt, looking after two sick patients, one of them a newborn, and all the while in recovery herself.

But finally, the medicine took effect and Leo recovered. Three weeks after Ektoras’ birth, he picked him up and cradled him for the first time, and has barely put him down since. Except once.

Agni and Leo’s family are in Greece and Brazil respectively. Both sides have been desperate to meet the new arrival, but a trip to Brazil doesn’t look likely anytime soon, due to Covid. Things in Greece are a little better, and Agni and Leo managed to head over there for a month in September. They stayed in the family hotel, a 12-room resort named after Agni.

With no guests to share it with, they had the place to themselves. Ektoras is a happy, friendly child who smiles at everyone. His grandma took this as a sign of his affection for her, and for almost the entire month insisted on holding and carrying him every second she could. She reluctantly handed Ektoras back to his mum for feeding, before whisking him away again.

Because of this year’s lockdown, that was the new parents’ first experience of sharing their baby’s attention with someone else just as in love with him as they are 🙂

Agni and Leo had originally booked in for a newborn shoot with me, but we had to postpone due to the lockdown. Although missing capturing the newborn stage is incredibly sad, having a sitter session instead meant we could capture his grins, giggles and interactions instead. Ektoras particularly loves when his mum and dad chat or sing to him. The fact that they do this in Greek, Brazilian and English means the lucky lad will grow up trilingual.

Some of the images we captured during Ektoras’ sitter session will be gifts for family who won a bet: the day of Ektoras’ arrival.

The bet was won by Leo’s brother and sister who correctly guessed that Ektoras would arrive two days past his due date, on 9 April. That’s already a busy month, with four other family birthdays (including one on 10th and another on 11th), so April is fast-becoming a month-long celebration!

In the six short months since his arrival, Ektoras has already been wowing his dad, who watches and notes his developmental milestones with close fascination. Leo’s own dad showed the same interest in Leo’s development when he was a baby, and now they are both enjoying watching Ektoras learning and growing, too.

Through no fault of his own, Leo missed the first three weeks of Ektoras’ life. Now, he’s extra determined to never miss out on another second. 🙂

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If you’re interested in child or family photography in Bicester, Oxfordshire, please get in contact.

Sarah Plater LMPA is an award-winning qualified, certified professional newborn and family portrait photographer based in Bicester, Oxfordshire. She is the Master Photographers Association Newborn Photographer of the Year 2019 for the Central Region (covering Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire).