A gender reveal…this is something that has become really Pinterest-y over the last couple of years, and despite my love of the platform, I didn’t entirely want to be publicly surprised at a party or in some other way. To be honest, the timing of finding out the gender of our little one was a little precarious for me.

We were fortunate enough to find out earlier than most, but I unfortunately suffered from some pretty debilitating morning sickness. What that really meant was that I was excited to know the gender and to share it with everyone, but feeling well enough to take these photos was about as much as I could take.

Just a behind the scenes snapshot into what taking these photos can sometimes look like…it’s not all studio glamour!

We’re one of those couples that wanted to know the gender of our baby ahead of time. To us, if you can find out, then why not? We’re also the kind of people that like to keep things pretty low-key when we can, so we opted for a simple reveal.

We were fortunate enough to be able to find out early and….

It’s a girl!!!

Finding out the gender was not only an exciting thing to share with our family and friends, but also with all of you! We’ve received an overwhelming amount of lovely comments and well wishes and are just so thankful for all of the support and that our baby is growing happy and healthy in there!

Yes, Van’s going to be outnumbered but he sure doesn’t seem to mind! We’re excited for what the journey of raising a daughter will be like and Hattie’s excited at the prospect of sharing someone’s new toys! We keep telling her she’s going to be a big sister and she loves to snuggle up to my bump and listen carefully.

A Little ‘Behind the Scenes’ Truth
About These Pics

These photos weren’t entirely easy to snap…and we did them ourselves with a tripod!  Picture this:

• Trying to get your dog to focus on the camera in a park full of distracting passers-by (some guy in the park with AirPods is twirling a stick and doing some kind of parkour dance to his own ‘drum’).
• You have a bunch of helium balloons with perfectly strung ribbon but every few minutes a gust of wind comes up and blows them about causing them to tangle.
• Trying to hold Hattie, my bump and the balloons was a little much, so we opted to tie them to her harness. She didn’t seem to mind.
• Strangers keep walking through your photos oblivious to the fact that you’re trying to do something. Once they realize, some stop to become audience members.

Sometimes it’s just fun to share the differences between Instagram and reality which is really what it took to get that one perfect photo…and in the end, we got it!