As you may recall, I announced in a previous post that we were following Becky and Eric's journey into parenthood. For me, this began when I came to their condo on St. Patrick's Day for a lifestyle maternity session. I also mentioned that to shake things up a bit, I'd be letting Becky tell you about her client experience, so that you can see what an Ümla session is all about, through a client's eyes! As a side note, I would like to invite any clients with a love of writing to blog about their photo session experiences. Please contact me if you're interested! Here, in here own words, are Becky's thoughts about her very first Ümla-Experience!

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When Adriana first approached me about a photo series, I was almost a bit hesitant. This seemed a bit too good to be true. As a photo nut, who spends way too much time on Pinterest and photography blogs looking through amazing maternity and baby photos, to have the opportunity to get these photos of ourselves and our little pea was incredible! I asked Adriana what she had in mind for a maternity photo session, like where we should go, what we should do. She made it pretty easy on us by saying that her lifestyle photography focuses on a “Day in the Life”, so we should just go about our day and do the photos in our condo! At 37 weeks pregnant, not having to leave the comfort of our own home was music to my ears, but I also wondered what we could do to make our daily routine a bit more photo-worthy. While trying to figure out dates, St. Patrick’s Day was fast approaching and with ambitions of cooking a cute, festive breakfast, we booked the session for the Sunday morning of St. Patty’s day.

Dressed in green (apparently not intentionally!), Adriana arrived as I was scrambling to get everything ready and make our “day in the life” look a little more put together. With dishes drying in the sink and breakfast supplies on the counter, I gave up and embraced the fact that if we were really going to capture our daily routine, this was it! We settled comfortably into mixing up pancakes while Adriana snapped away with her camera, chatting away the whole time making it almost unnoticeable that this was a photo shoot. At first, it was hard not to think about “posing” but Adriana’s laid back approach made us all but forget that a camera was on while pouring pancake batter into the shape of a shamrock. Of course, it had to be caught on camera that my husband’s pancake art turned out better than mine...

Becky_Maternity-041 I had planned a few of our baby prep chores that I thought might be fun to photograph, so we ventured into baby’s room and Adriana did well to squeeze into the tiny space to capture us putting on the crib mattress pad and change pad cover.

Becky_Maternity-067 Baby’s laundry still needed to be folded, which made for some really fun photos!

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Some of my favourite shots are definitely the ones outside on our balcony. Though it was chilly, the sun was out and I didn’t mind the need to cuddle close to my baby daddy for warmth!

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When Adriana first proposed the “day in the life” idea, I said something along the lines of, “we’ll have to make things a bit more interesting than us sitting around on our laptops!”  Turns out, that photo of us (and of course my bump!) with our laptops is probably one of my favourite shots of the day, because it really is typical US. It was so fun to have these photos of the two (almost three) of us in our own environment. We were definitely anxious for a first peek at the photos!

Becky_Maternity-286 I was a little surprised when Adriana told us to find a date for her to come by our place to personally show us a slideshow proofing of our photos, as part of the full ÜmlaPhoto experience. This was definitely above and beyond my expectations, as I figured she’d just send along a link to our photos and that would be it! Exactly one week later, Adriana arrived with her iPad and showed off our photos which had been compiled into a stunning slideshow with integrated quotes and music. Putting music to photos completely enhances the experience and made it that much more special seeing the photos for the first time. Thinking back to how many different things she had photographed at the session, I was curious to see what ended up being the best of the best. I was really pleased that we ended up with photos of pretty much everything we had done that day, really giving a snapshot of our “day in the life”. Adriana provided us with many ways of sharing the photos with our friends and family, and I can’t wait to show them off!

Stay tuned....soon enough we’ll be ready for photos of our little pea outside of the belly!

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Becky is Bebo Mia's Business Development Manager. She and hubby Eric are expecting their first child in early April. For more on Becky's journey into the wonderful world of parenthood check out her personal blog!