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July 23, 2020

RACHEL & DEX | ALDIE MILL MATERNITY SESSION

RACHEL & DEX | ALDIE MILL MATERNITY SESSION

It was an honor to capture Dex and Rachel’s Aldie Mill maternity session earlier this month! Each is my cousin and I’ve been honored to photograph her engagement photos, wedding, and now maternity session! I can’t wait to meet Baby girl Green! We went on an “adventure” session around Aldie for her boho inspired maternity session. I knew Rachel wanted fields, golden hour, and the Aldie Dam was a BONUS location that I had always wanted to check out!

Rachel answered some questions about her pregnancy and how everything has been going so keep reading through the whole post for her answers and her best piece of advice through pregnancy.

Let’s start with how Rachel told Dex and her family that she was pregnant!

“I found out we were pregnant at only 3 weeks (so she was about the size of a poppy seed!). We had been trying for almost 2 years and had an appointment scheduled to see a fertility specialist for the end of the month. When I went home for Christmas, without my husband – he had to work the holiday, I packed some pregnancy tests at the last minute. The test showed a VERY faint line on Christmas Eve so I was absolutely floored when it came back positive on Christmas morning! I tearfully shared the news with my parents and then had to spend all Christmas morning without telling the rest of the family over for Christmas dinner, it was agonizing but I hadn’t told my husband yet!

A year before, I had thought I was pregnant and bought a plain onesie and baby hat at the store and hid it in my closet until I were to need it. I borrowed a gift box from my mom to wrap everything in, wrote on the onesie (with sharpie because I didn’t have time to do anything else LOL), and put it in the box with the little hat and our positive pregnancy test.

When my husband got off work, I hid the box in with all the rest of his Christmas presents and made him open them while I pretended to take pictures that I said I sending to my mom. It was such a special moment and I’m so thankful that I was able to catch his reaction on camera. He was in disbelief as he pulled out the teeniest onesie with “Merry Christmas DAD” written on it. It was incredibly special to have found out we were pregnant on (arguably) the best day of the year.”

Keep scrolling for more of this Aldie Mill maternity session!

Have you picked out a name yet?

“We have a name but we aren’t announcing on social media until after she is born. We’ve had a running list of baby names for a while now but have definitely had a difficult time coming to mutual consensus about which ones are our favorites. We agreed that the first name would be something unique and uncommon and the middle name would be a family name. Dex actually came up with her first name and we picked a family name that we thought went with it best.”
What is one piece of advice you would give to expecting mothers?

“There are SO many things that I could say but I think the most important thing I’ve had to learn is this: You do not have to answer everyone’s questions nor do you need to justify the decisions you make about your health. You do not need to take everyone’s advice as to what you “should” or “shouldn’t” do for your baby. It’s your baby, your family, and your health. There are definitely topics people feel that they are experts on (ie. sleep, breast feeding, etc). It can be overwhelming and uncomfortable to deal with all the opinions and suggestions. You are allowed to say no thanks or move the conversation along to something else.”

This Aldie Mill engagement session has quickly become one of my favorite sessions. I can’t wait for Rachel and Dex to have their little one! Baby is due in September!

Schedule your own family or maternity session by sending me an inquiry through my contact form!