My Bump Shoot (from the one with the bump).

Full disclosure – despite this being my studio and Janine being my bestie and business partner - I was proper nervous and feeling mega self conscious before my shoot. I’m not sure if it was;

Just normal nerves about having my pic taken (no one is ever cool about this right?)

Let’s be real – having your pics taken when you’re feeling swollen and a sore and not really feeling like you have any control of your own body is just plain weird!

Maybe because I was completely knackered on account of the shitfest that is restless leg syndrome and had barely slept a wink the night before (TIPS WELCOME!).

OR because of the good old heckling I took before my session from lovely Alan, our building handyman!

Probs a good old combination of all of the above lol.

J and I had three shoots before mine so I was pretty much a sweaty mess by the time we were ready for my shoot. (Note to self 90 mins in the newbcube + two hours of toddlers chasing is probs not the ‘best’ shoot prep!) Anyways it helped take my mind off everything and despite feeling all sweaty and super awkward and a bit sore and swollen - this shoot was so much FUN and just plain good CRAIC! Seriously I had to take like 3 pee breaks because we laughed so hard!

Bottom line – despite how much I had built it up in my head - it just wasn’t that big of a deal! It was 35 mins long (inc the pee breaks), Janine and I quickly went through my outfits choices before we started the shoot and we finished it off with a cuppa and a kit kat. We pretty much roared our way through the whole shoot – stopping only for two reasons a) to properly laugh our asses off when Janine gave me hysterical direction (I am not the easiest person to pose – imagine hunched shoulders and too much eyeball) or b) to say “omg I can’t believe we are actually doing this bump shoot” (it’s still a bit surreal to both of us that I’m actually having a baby!).

Having a bump shoot is personal to each momma-to-be but here are some of the reasons doing this was important to me:

Documenting every part of this little babies story. Being in photos with this little human is SOOO important to me. I don’t have that many pictures of me with my parents and it breaks my heart because they aren’t here anymore so there is squat all that I can do about it. BUT I can and will learn from a sad chapter and use it to make this next chapter a very happy and well-documented one. I want this baby to be able to see themselves in my belly! I want to show them the book that will live in our front room that shows their bump and newborn shoot. Imagining myself showing this story to our baby is something I am weirdly excited about.

Let’s celebrate the wins! Pregnancy (for me personally) has not been a magical time! Despite being super lucky and having had a really great pregnancy so far - I just don’t enjoy being out of breath all the time, or having to sleep on my side, or the weird pains or the evil asshole that is restless leg syndrome! BUT all the crappy stuff to one side – it’s a real life miracle! Growing a human with your body is insane and something I struggle to even wrap my brain around every single day. Feeling this little one kick and squirm and hiccup and stomp all over my organs is something I’m incredibly grateful for. (OK so I’m not always grateful for the bladder stomps). We are all guilty of not celebrating the good stuff in our own story! It’s so easy to focus on the bad things, or the next things and not take time to appreciate the good things right now. So for me, the bump shoot was a way of doing just that. Stopping for a moment to appreciate the fact that I’m lucky enough to experience growing this wee human for 33 weeks now! And a way of recording what’s happening right now - knowing that in 7 short weeks things are going to change forever! It really doesn’t matter how I feel today or how self-conscious I might be of having my photo taken. That’s not what I’m going to remember in 1 or 5 or 10 years from now. I already LOVE these maternity photos and I know I’m only going to love them more as the years pass.

Momma’s business! This one is going to be personal to just me but I’m INCREDIBLY proud of what Janine and I have built at RinkaDink. We’ve worked so hard over the last five years to create something unique and completely different to anything else out there! We’ve worked our asses off to curate each shoot at RAD to make it something we ADORE – so OF COURSE I wanted to experience the RinkaDink magic for myself! And I can honestly say it was as amazing as I hoped it would be.

As well as giving me the hysterical direction, Janine put me completely at ease – reassuring me the whole shoot and helping me to ‘get out of my head’ about the whole thing (trust me - this is not an easy task)! I’m beside myself about the newborn shoot and I am so crazy grateful that I have such an amazeballs friend and business partner to do this for me!!

The RADDEST Bump!