I have no idea. I’m not sure why this is a thing, but I saw maternity photos like this in one of my photography groups and I’ve been dying to recreate them. I suppose it makes as much sense as pregnant women standing around in a field or on a beach or anywhere that isn’t Target or the grocery store.

Most of these are slightly out of focus, or at least nowhere near as sharp as “my” photos usually are. That’s because it’s impossible to stand in a creek AND stand behind the camera, so I had my husband take them. He did an amazing job, but I failed to double check my settings before passing over the camera and made some rookie mistakes. Life has been too crazy to go back and try to re-do them (and honestly, I doubt that’s going to happen before I give birth and I didn’t want to be in labor shouting “WAIT NO FIRST WE HAVE TO STOP AT THE CREEK”) so I edited them the best I could to fit my vision and you know what? They’re super. This is what a crazy pregnant woman who wants to climb around a creek in 90-degree weather at 37 weeks pregnant looks like.

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I feel like E needs extra credit for the above photo – Linc was just sitting there, waiting for me to get out of the water and E looked over and was like “Wow, that light!” and took a picture. I must be rubbing off on him.

And this photo of Evan is the one right before he pees in the creek.

Why yes, Caroline and I DID both bring multiple outfits to wear in a creek.

Super soon that baby on my back will be the big kid and a new baby will be the baby. I’m feeling a little sad about it, since Linc makes such a nice baby. He is cuddly and loves to be worn and still barely talks so it’s super easy to THINK of him as a baby. (As a sidenote, I’ve resubmitted him to Birth to 3 so hopefully this time we qualify for speech therapy because I have NO IDEAS left on how to get him to say real words.) But since he understands every single word I say, has started showing interest in the potty and sleeps in a real bed with no problem, he’s not really a baby. I’m pretty excited about having an actual real baby again. Or maybe I’m just really excited not to be pregnant anymore. DEFINITELY that last thing.

While I was at Mom 2.0 at the beginning of May, I ended up in a bunch of photos. And since this is 2014, some of those photos ended up on Facebook. And because it’s Facebook, I ended up tagged, which meant all my friends – from my 4th grade classmates to the girl who lived on my floor in college to my mother’s second cousin who lives in Sweden – saw them.

I did not like it. They were not flattering. They were candid, and that is what I look like in candid photos, but they made me sad.

**insert literally 1000 words I wrote then deleted about how being fat sucks here**

You know what’s a huge waste of my time? Being sad about being fat while pregnant. I feel a compulsive need to mention my doctor is unconcerned – I don’t have high blood pressure or gestational diabetes or any other weight-related complications – so all my sadness is purely vanity-related right now.

I do a lot of maternity photo sessions and my clients are always GORGEOUS. Because that’s who wants maternity photos – people who look adorable even at 8 months pregnant. People who look like me spend 5 minutes on Pinterest and realize no lacy dress and oversized sun hat will ever change the size of their arms or shape of their face. But this is what I look like. This is what I look like right now while growing baby #3 and walking around in the world and there is nothing wrong with wanting photos of myself OR with showing those photos to other people.

It’s like that meme about how to get a bikini ready body: Buy a bikini, put it on your body. Done.

Here’s how to take plus size maternity photos. Be pregnant in front of a camera, get someone to press the shutter button. Done.

I owe my husband a huge thanks for helping with these. He very patiently posed for all my pictures so I could adjust the manual camera settings and then I had to explain exactly what I wanted – “The sun should be shining behind us to make haze but not TOO much haze and don’t get the sun actually in the picture and try to get the focus point right on the kids and tell me if my bra is showing [it was ALWAYS showing] and does my arm look OK like this or should I hold it differently?” – and he did all of it standing in the buggy, snakey orchard without complaining. He doesn’t really understand WHY I wanted 400 photos of myself standing in an orchard, but he knew it was important so he helped. He’s a good guy.