by Carolyn Robertson posted in Mom Stories

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes. You are about to see that when it comes to childbirth, that old idiom seems to be true.
Powerful. Primal. Painful. Beautiful. Messy. Enduring. Moving. Love, and, tragically, even loss.
These are just some of the words that scream out from the more than 500 entries to The International Association of Professional Birth Photographers' 2016 Image of the Year Competition. Submitted by photographers from around the world, the pictures succeed in capturing those fleeting but life-changing moments of childbirth. Judging on "technicality, emotionality and composition," a panel that included Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein - who produced the groundbreaking documentary The Business of Being Born - as well as professional photographers, doulas and childbirth educators somehow managed to narrow the incredible collection of photos down to just a handful.
Here are the winners, which were revealed earlier today:

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