One piece of advice I want to give all of my pregnant friends is to be sure to get maternity photos with your husband! Whether it’s professionally shot or a just a few casual snaps at home with your bump in full view, it’s so wonderful to be able to have a photo to look back on of the time you two experienced together.
More of our maternity photos + a special moment that happened over a year ago that somewhat brings us to where we are today are shared below! & I’m also talking about a thoughtful gift that I plan to wear every day that represents our little family of three!
There are so many reasons why Patrick and I are excited to be parents, I wouldn’t even know where to begin if I tried. I feel like though, we truly can’t even fathom the magnitude of the gift we are about to receive any day now!! Life will utterly change as we know it and we are so ready!
I remember the first time it crossed my mind that something (or someone) was missing from our family. And this wasn’t just daydreaming of “oh one dayyyyy we’ll have a baby” it was like in this moment I KNEW something was missing. It was a rainy weekend day a little over a year ago and we had just cleaned the house and had no real plans for the evening, except for a delicious dinner accompanied by a bottle of wine. The two of us were on the couch watching the movie Inside Out and just cracking UP! The dogs were at our feet and we were completely content.
I remember thinking something’s missing from this picture!? And I just imagined, for a second, our future kiddo watching the movie with us in the same scenario and we were all just as happy as can be. It felt SO right and SO real in that moment and that’s when I knew that we were more ready than we actually “knew” we were for this next chapter. Even seeing Patrick’s face laughing hysterically at the childish scenes in the film and getting emotional over the little girl’s character when all was in peril, I could tell he was more ready than he knew too. 😉
Several months after that, we were happily surprised with two blue lines and a positive. It was truly meant to be that we would become a family of three!
On another (more fashion related) topic, I need to talk about this ring because it’s has an extra-special meaning to me! But naturally, I have to give a little bit of a back story first. As a wedding present, Patrick gave me a beautiful pearl necklace with one diamond on it to mark the occasion. Tragically, I lost the necklace on a vacation just one year later. (Tears!) Since then, I’ve kind of shied away from nicer pieces of jewelry out of fear of getting something that I would just lose.
With a baby on the way, we thought what better opportunity to try again in the jewelry department for something just as sentimental to mark this oh-so-special occasion. And while I’ve lost both necklaces and earrings in the past, a ring seemed like the safest bet!
I knew I would want something unique and not too fussy, but I didn’t know where to begin looking. And I certainly wanted Patrick to have some input too. I recently heard about Swoonery, an e-retailer that specializes in each individual’s aesthetic, recommending pieces for you based on your personal preferences. You input your sizes & take a style quiz on the Swoonery app and carefully curated pieces are handpicked based on your tastes! It’s basically like Tinder, but for jewelry lovers! Which makes it SO much easier on whoever is doing the gift giving. They’ll have a list of items at their fingertips that the recipient is sure to love!
Anyway, that’s how I found out about this gorgeous pearl & diamond ring by Cherry Brown. The two little pearls hug a sparkly diamond on a slim band of yellow gold. I like to think of the two pearls as representing Patrick & I and the diamond as a little baby to be. It certainly makes me smile to look down at my hand and see them all together like that! 🙂
With life about to change drastically annnnnny day now, I’m so glad to have this guy by my side for all that’s to come!!!
I’m also looking forward to sharing the next big adventure with you all soon! But until then, I have some regularly scheduled style posts that I’ll be popping out. So when you see them and think, what’s this crazy pregnant lady/new mom doing blogging at a time like this!?! Just know, these posts were written in advance and most likely I’m spending my time away from the blog getting in ALL the cuddles I can! And thanks to you guys for following along and always stopping by the blog to say hello, it means so much!
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xo, alice
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photos by Lauren Rathbun Photography
