One of the things that I wanted very much to do during my pregnancy was to keep a record. Originally, I had grand plans for a weekly diary entry where I would write to the baby about what was happening during my pregnancy and how things were going. It was a super adorable idea that I kept with for about 12 weeks before abandoning simply because my pregnancy turned out to be one of the busiest periods of my life. Not only was I pregnant and exhausted (hello first trimester fatigue!) but I was also undertaking not one but two of my teaching placements in order to finish my degree before our little person arrived (so glad I did that now). I’m still glad I did the diary entries, even if I didn’t do them the entire way through, because now I have words like this from the day I found out I was pregnant:
Dear Baby,
Today we found out that you exist, that you’re in there just hanging out, so tiny I can barely imagine that you’re real. I was supposed to go to a fertility doctor today, to try and figure out why we couldn’t fall pregnant, but you decided to show up just in time, and save us all the trouble.
I took a test in the mid-morning because I wasn’t feeling myself. The line was faint, but I could see it straight away and I texted your dad with a picture of it just to make sure. He could see it too! I was so happy that I cried, and when your dad came home from work in the afternoon he picked me up and spun me all around the house celebrating.
We are so happy you’re here.
Yep, now I’m crying again.
Anyway.
While the diary entries didn’t pan out through my whole pregnancy, I did manage at least make a valiant effort at recording my pregnancy in photographs. Being a photographer I felt this was something of a duty, and while I did have dreams of a consistent and Instaworthy series of images, the result was a bit more random but much more me. As the weeks went by, at first so slowly and then at speeds that can scarcely be believed, the little baby in my belly grew and grew, and so did I! Now that it’s all said and done, I feel grateful I made myself stand in front of my camera every few weeks, as a record of just how amazing pregnancy, and my body, really is.
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