Belly Photos

I think every mum-to-be must get photos of her belly!! Because, hopefully, your belly will never be that big again (unless of course you have more lillies).
And as much as I really didn't want/feel like having my photo taken while pregnant, I now love having those few photos to look back on. Unfortunately I didn't do weekly or even monthly shots  for Chloe (huge regret!!) and swore I would do it for Jayce. I didn't. (huge regret!!) But I HAD to have some pictures. And I just couldn't resist doing a cute family before and after shoot.

So I planned for Brendens mum to come around one afternoon and take a few snaps.

First up we just took a few shots of the three of us and one very big belly in our backyard.
You can't really see it, but Chloes singlet has an iron-on which says 'I'm the big sister', corny but I had to do it!

Then we did some before pictures.
Sitting on the couch one night while pregnant I looked over and saw Brenden leaning back making his belly look big with a beer in his hand, next to him was Chloe leaning back making her belly look big with milk in her hand and I came up with this belly photo idea.
(unfortunately I found similar photos on the internet a week later so the idea wasn't as unique as I thought)

Of course there were a few outtakes.

We put Chloe up on the rocks to try and get all our bellies at the same level but it put her too far into background of the photo so we moved our local to the other side of our yard and stood her on her sandpit lid instead.

We had our before shots so now we needed the baby to arrive so we could get the after ones. And exactly a week (even down to the hour) Jayce was born.
However for weeks and weeks after the weather was so terrible! We hit the heart of winter and it rained every single day! I was very frustrated by this and was driving Brenden nuts nagging about when we could get the after shot.
Finally on a Sunday afternoon the sun broke through for a whole two hours! My mum and aunty had just driven up from Victoria to come visit for the week. The moment they pulled into the driveway I shoved a camera in their hands and dragged them out the back.

I had kept all of our clothes from the original photo clean to make sure they were ready and waiting for when we could take the next photo. Of course this particular Sunday Brenden had dressed Chloe in these jeans then let her jump in puddles all morning so they were soaking wet, so you may notice she looks a lil shift and cold. Actually we were all freezing! But I got my photos =D

And the final products.

It took a bit of fiddling around with the colour, exposure and stuff but I think I got them pretty close. And they were well worth it!
I will always love these photos. So glad we did it!
XoXoX Nicole.

P.S.Wish me luck as tonight I attempt to drive the 7+ hours to my home town in Victoria with a 2 year old and 2 month old by myself...