Reminiscing: Maternity Photos

When LP was born I didn’t have any proper photos from my pregnancy to look back on, just ones taken on days out or every few weeks to update the world on bump’s progress. But with Little Man a wonderful photographer friend of mine took some photos of me at the end of the pregnancy.

I loved being pregnant and I loved my bump. In pregnancy I felt beautiful, naturally beautiful and I completely understood that glowing term people used to describe pregnant women. I didn’t feel glowing myself but I felt just gloriously happy. Heavy and slow too but incredibly happy at the same time.

LP loved my bump. She loved kissing it, hugging it and blowing raspberries on it. I think she bonded with her brother even before he was born, she just spent so much time with my bump, snuggling in the afternoons.

I loved having pregnancy photos taken. They were fun but also completely captured that time in our lives. I was spending as much time as possible with LP before her brother came along. I wanted to savour that time of it being just us and her.

LP was the baby that made us parents. She was our first. She was a learning curve. She was everything for 20 months until her brother came into our lives. This pregnancy, we knew, would be our last, that he would be not just our second child, but our last child. We knew that he would complete our family.

I love that I have photos from Little Man’s pregnancy. In a way all four of us are in these photos. Our very first complete family photos. It’s strange to think that the bump I had there is now very nearly three – and the tiny little lady has been a big sister for nearly three years too. What an incredible little person she has become.

It feels like so long ago that I was last pregnant. So long ago that I found it so hard to sleep, that I walked so slowly and needed the toilet every two minutes. But looking at these photos I am right back there again, with that comforting weight in front of me, the constant movements and the rhythmic kick like sensation when the baby got the hiccups. It was so long ago and yet I can remember it all so clearly.