Week 31: No maternity photos?

By Published On: August 12th, 2014

I know there’s a chance I’ll regret it. I know […]

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My Weekly Bump Pic is already becoming too much for me. And I don’t even have to pay my husband to take it.

I know there’s a chance I’ll regret it. I know they’re really popular right now, and I should do them. I know that you’re only pregnant with your first baby once and that I’ll never get the opportunity to capture these moments again. I just cannot convince myself to schedule a professional photo shoot to capture my huge, expanding body. So I’m not.
Sorry, I just don’t want maternity photos. Here’s why:
5 Reasons I’m Not Doing Maternity Photos
  1. Professional photography is expensive. There’s a reason photographers have a link on their website that says “investment” instead of “prices”: you are literally investing the amount of money on photos that you could be spending on five shares of Google. By the time I pay a pro to take pictures, buy the disc of photos and order prints, canvases and photo books, I could have put my daughter through her first three years of daycare.
  2. I’ve never been this fat. Maybe that makes me vain, but I just don’t want to capture this particular state of my body. My legs are tree trunks, my feet could play in the WNBA and my hips are NOT lying these days. The only thing that I’m sad won’t benefit from documentation of a professional lens is the recent expansion of my chest. It’s quite possibly the first and last time in my life I’ll ever have cleavage.
  3. My husband is not on board. Getting him to agree to do engagement photos a couple years ago was not easy; I just don’t think men enjoy staged photos. Given that, I just can’t picture Dan, posing with his arms around my belly, hands forming a little heart … just, no. The only thing worse than cheesy photos where the husband is enthusiastically kissing the naked belly are cheesy photos where the husband is begrudgingly kissing the naked belly.
  4. I want to spend the money on photography once the baby is actually here. Newborn photo shoot? Already booked it. LOVE the idea. First birthday photo shoot? Planning on it. I want to save my money for photos I can enlarge to 11×16” one day and hang them all over the house. Call me crazy, but I think a huge black and white canvas of a newborn is much more desirable hanging over the mantle than a photo of me, 327 pounds, wearing a tent.
  5. Laziness. If I’m being honest, there’s just too much pressure to have this perfect Pinterest-worthy maternity shoot, at daybreak or sunset, in an ethereal gown, arms outstretched into the wind, embracing my inner mother.  If maternity shoots took place in the living room and captured me on the couch, with my swollen feet propped up on several couch pillows, and the photographer snapped away while I chugged apple juice out of the bottle, then maybe I’d consider the “investment.”