I was really happy to find out I was pregnant. Many of my friends had difficult conceiving and at my age (approaching mid-thirties) I thought I might have needed to go the IVF route. However I was relieved we didn’t have to go through that, though I understand how hard that road must be.

We found out we were having a boy at the ultrasound around 20 weeks 🙂

During the first trimester, I could not get enough bread. I went through 4 loaves per week! I ate toast constantly during that time and I was hungry. I ate lots of pb toast, or cheese toast, or mayo on taost. I had food aversions to garlic and meat, and I took a liking to green vegetables. This was very strange as I am not a salad person!

I had very typical pregnancy symptoms. I was so very tired and had to nap daily. I had a bit of nausea but it wasn’t as bad as other people’s. I felt nauseous until 12 weeks. I had a super increased sense of smell.

In the second trimester, I didn’t have as much appetite for bread, but I craved polish sausage hot dogs from Costco. I also liked mayo by the spoon. Mayo has seemed to be a constant throughout my adult life though, since was 18.

I had backaches around this time, the occasional headache, and insomnia. I also felt the baby pressing against my bladder all the time :O

In the third trimester I like blueberry pie and croissants with mayo. I felt most hungry at 32 weeks. At around 7 months I would start to get breathless and have shin splints. The biggest symptom I found was heartburn. Zantac was a saviour!

Then I became very clumsy and surprised that I would drop things. I read lots of articles, books and tried to research as much as I could before the baby came. Also, none of my clothes fit, naturally. I would wear tent dresses, leggings and tried to get away with wearing pjs as much as possible.

I was still working throughout the pregnancy until about a month before delivery. I would be a little slower photographing, but it didn’t really change anything my photography style. I did have to cancel a couple of weddings that were happening around the due date.

We did a maternity session with Jamie Dimitry and I was super thankful we had the photos done.

The baby was very active throughout the pregnancy, he kept moving nonstop and was always kicking and moving his arms about. One time when I went to Beijing Beijing, the food had a lot of MSG and the baby did not stop kicking after that!

Pregnancy is such a neat and different experience it just can’t be wholly described. It was at the same time both incredible and also surreal to go through it.