Born at St Thomas’ Hospital: A First Birthday Shoot Beneath Big Ben
By ANDREA WHELAN – a London Family Photographer Who Knows Exactly One Joke
Celebrating a first birthday where it all began, on the South Bank, outside the hospital with the Big Ben view
A year ago, this boy was born in one of the rooms on the upper floors of that hospital, so this stretch of the South Bank isn’t just somewhere pretty for them. It’s the place where their little boy came into the world.
That’s why, when they got in touch about a first birthday session, they already knew exactly where they wanted it. “Can we do it outside the hospital? The bit by the river. That’s where he was born, that’s our place.”
I said yes before they’d finished the sentence. Because this is exactly the kind of thing I love photographing, a family marking the anniversary of something enormous in the exact place where that enormous thing happened. The hospital where he was born. The view his mum saw from her window while she held him for the first time. It’s not a backdrop. It’s the story.
BACK WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
A FIRST BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION PHOTOSHOOT
A little bit about having a baby at St Thomas’
If you’re reading this because you’re about to give birth at St Thomas’ Hospital, or you’re trying to decide where to have your baby in London, pull up a chair. I’m not a midwife, but I’ve photographed enough London families to have picked up a few things, and this particular shoot sent me down a small rabbit hole of asking questions.
St Thomas’ is part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and it sits directly opposite the Houses of Parliament on the South Bank of the Thames. The maternity unit is on the north side of the hospital, which means some of the labour and postnatal rooms do genuinely look out over the river, Westminster Bridge, and the Elizabeth Tower, the bit most of us still call Big Ben. Not every room has that view, obviously. But if you’re one of the lucky ones, the windows are enormous, and the view is almost comically cinematic.
The maternity unit runs a consultant-led labour ward, a birth centre for lower-risk births with birthing pools and softer lighting, and a home-birth team for the parts of London it serves. Antenatal care, scans, triage, and the postnatal ward all sit in the same part of the building, which parents I’ve spoken to say makes the whole experience feel joined up rather than scattered.
A few practical things worth knowing if you’re planning a birth there:
— It’s a large teaching hospital, so expect student midwives and doctors to be part of your care (you can say no, always).
— Partners can usually stay on the postnatal ward in the private rooms when available, which isn’t the case everywhere in London.
— The Evelina London Children’s Hospital is part of the same site, so if your baby needs specialist care they don’t go far.
— Parking is a nightmare, as it is everywhere central. Most families I know arrive by taxi or, in one slightly chaotic story I was told, by Uber with the contractions timed on a phone between the bridges.
— And yes, some of the rooms really do have that view. You can’t request it, but you might get lucky.
Whatever room you end up in, the thing people always tell me about St Thomas’ is how kind the staff were. That’s the phrase that comes up every single time. Kind. Calm. Unhurried, even when everything was moving fast. This family said the same thing, almost word for word.
Coming back a year later
There’s something quietly powerful about going back to a place where something huge happened to you, on a completely ordinary afternoon, with a one-year-old in a clean jumper and a pair of tiny shoes that keep coming off.
When we arrived at the river, his mum pointed up at the hospital and said, “That window, roughly, that’s where he was born.” And then she looked at him, in her arms, wriggling to get down and investigate a pigeon. And there was this moment, the thread I’m always hunting for, where you could see the whole year pass across her face. The labour, the relief of him arriving safely, the blur of those first weeks, and then the beautiful ordinariness of now, holding a small person who is somehow already a person with opinions about bubbles and hoods.
I didn’t ask her to look at the camera. I didn’t ask anyone to smile. I just made sure I was in the right place when it happened.
ONE YEAR ON
A FIRST BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION PHOTOSHOOT
What we actually did on the day
First birthday shoots with one-year-olds are their own special category. They don’t pose. They don’t follow instructions. They have opinions, and the opinions change every ninety seconds. My approach is to lean into that completely.
We started by the river, with Big Ben doing its thing in the background. He was suspicious of me for about four minutes, which is fairly standard, and then he decided I was fine and got on with the important work of pointing at boats. His parents held him, walked with him, let him down to toddle, blew bubbles for him, picked him back up when he got distracted by a seagull. I walked around them, quietly, not saying much.
Then we moved across the river away from the busiest tourist bit, and found some softer light near historic buildings. This is where the quieter photographs happened, the ones where he’s crawling on steps with his mum as it started to rain Those are my favourites.
No cakes, no balloons. For them the location was already doing so much heavy lifting, emotionally, a chic and wonderfully emotional celebration. Perfection, in all the right ways.
If you’re thinking of doing something similar
A few honest thoughts, if you’re considering a first birthday shoot near St Thomas’, Westminster, or the South Bank. Whether your baby was born there or you just love the view.
First: This shoot happened at 6.30am. I would strongly advise yours to start at sunrise too.
Second: it’s busy. This is central London, and Westminster Bridge is one of the most walked bits of the city. I know how to work around it. If you can’t start at sunrise then I employ tight framing, patient timing, moving a little further east or west when the crowds thicken, but you should come prepared for other people to be in the world with you. It’s part of the texture, honestly.
Third: bring snacks. I say this about every shoot with a small child and I will keep saying it until the end of time. A tired, hungry one-year-old on the South Bank is a different animal to a fed, rested one-year-old on the South Bank. I’ve seen both. I recommend the second.
Fourth: if your baby was born at St Thomas’ and you want to incorporate that meaningfully, then it doesn’t matter that it’s not the prettiest building in the world. It’s not about the building, it’s about you guys.
The thread I was following the whole time
I write about this a lot because it’s the thing I care about most: I’m not just pressing a button. I’m photographing the invisible thread between families. The moment a child reaches for a parent because they want to, not because anyone asked. The look that passes between two people who have a whole private history in a single glance.
On this shoot, the thread was unusually visible. Because every time either parent looked up at the hospital, then back down at their son, the whole year compressed into one expression. Relief. Pride. A little bit of disbelief that he’s here and he’s a whole person now. The kind of feeling you can’t fake and you can’t pose.
That’s the photograph I want them to still be looking at in twenty years. Not because it’s the most composed or the most Instagrammable, but because it’s the truest thing I saw all afternoon. And because when he’s older and they show him these images, he’ll be able to see, in his parents’ faces, exactly what it felt like to be loved this much on his first birthday.
If you’re thinking about a first birthday shoot in London
I photograph families all across London, Greenwich, Blackheath, Dulwich, Marylebone, Mayfair, and plenty of places in between, and I love a session that has a specific place attached to it. The hospital where you had your baby. The bench where you got engaged. The park you walked every day of maternity leave. The front room where you spent the first three months in a blur of feeding and nappies and love.
Meaning isn’t decoration. It’s the whole point. And if you’ve got a place that matters to you the way this stretch of the Thames matters to this family, I’d love to help you mark it.
Sessions are around 90 minutes, long enough for the nerves to wear off, the small people to stop performing, and the real life to come through. I’ll gently guide you when it helps and step back when it doesn’t. And I promise I won’t ask anyone to say cheese.
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