Nakita Grinie

My Maternity Pictures

Remember how I debated forever about whether I should spend money on professional maternity, birthing, and newborn photos? Well after a lot of research I decided to hire my buddy Andrea to do both a maternity and newborn shoot and for the birth I'll just make do with my lovely husband's skillz. Then perhaps once baby blueberry is bigger, maybe in the fall, we can get some 'professional' images taken as a whole family. I won't feel disgustingly fat that way and my little munchkin will have tons of personality by that point, I'm sure. Or who knows, maybe my own little mini photo shoots will suffice. I'm sure I'll take hundreds of shots on my own within the first week:)

But anyway, Andrea has been our Wisconsin photographer for three different shoots now: two family shoots for Christmas cards and now this maternity shoot. We both decided that this had to be the most fun shoot ever and ended up taking pictures for 2.5 hours in my house! I had scoured the internet for cute poses, outfit ideas, and thought very hard about capturing the best light possible in our little duplex. Would you be surprised to hear that I compiled an 'inspiration' collage for us to use during the shoot? No, of course not. :) It was just us gals plus Henry, since Nate was at class and although I love the maternity shots with the husband involved, it was fun for us ladies to play around with different photography ideas. And Henry couldn't stop licking Andrea in the face when she was down on his level snapping away and tended to put his butt right in the middle of every shot. He's a ladies man, that doggie!

I really wanted to have some cool black and white background shots and so we got very creative by hanging plain duvet covers from nails on the wall....I mean seriously, people, we were not messing around. I was hoping our front window would be a great source of light so I had Nate move away the couch from under the windows and we had to pull away the crib from a nursery wall but of course, the end result was well worth the furniture re-arranging:) I am absolutely in love with all of the pictures. Andrea is super talented and even though we pulled a lot of these poses from other online sources, many are all Andrea's idea and completely fabulous. I am so happy we did these now and can't imagine NOT having images of my first pregnancy to share for years to come. I actually feel somewhat attractive in them and less like a bloated whale so you know Andrea did her job well! I can't wait to tell people I knew Andrea back when she was starting her photography biz, before she got all famous and stuff:) If you are in the Milwaukee area you need to hunt her down asap before get gets too famous.

And now for a few of my favorites.....lots of pictures ahead, so buckle down!





























Do you love them as much as I do? Sigh. I really will miss being pregnant...