Kristina | Cottage maternity photoshoot with her two babes

Do you want to know a secret?

For my whole life I have imagined having two children, but there is this little part of me that, when I see a family with three kids, my heart skips a beat in a way I can’t quite explain. This feeling of wanting three babes in my life started to entertain my thoughts just a little while ago and every time I photograph families with three or more, my heartstrings wiggle in a whole other way. I know my husband doesn’t read my blog, so this will just be our little secret, for now at least.

As you know (if you know), we only have one little man in our lives, whom we love with our whole hearts. Oscar will be four this summer, and I do hope one day he will have a brother or sister, but until then...I’ll just keep capturing all the love between the siblings of the sweet families I have the delight of working with.

This particular family sure tugs on the heartstrings in a whole other way though, and let me tell you why.

One big obvious reason is that since shooting this, before finding the time to blog this session, I had the absolute honour and privilege of capturing the birth of this little babe, who Kristina was pregnant with during this session. This baby bump is now who we know as Matti Rose and she is one sweet little gem. That story of meeting little miss Matti in the early hours of the morning will come soon enough. But first, let’s start with this session and the story of Kristina, Ari, & Leo, while pregnant with Matti.

So the story actually starts way before Matti, when little miss Leo was in her mama’s belly. It was during the beginning of the pandemic when I was pivoting a bit and thus doing virtual sessions in place of real-life sessions as the lockdown was in full force. Kristina had booked a virtual session to capture her and Ari while pregnant with Leo. After Leo was born, the world kept going with the ups and downs of the pandemic world we’ve been in for over two years now and I heard from Kristina again, this time to talk about documenting the birth of her third babe, plus a maternity shoot.

That is where we dreamed up this session at their family cottage.

I drove up to their place, which is near the Kawarthas, early one morning with a hot coffee and some snacks. The drive is about 2–3 hrs but quiet drives with good podcasts are my jam, plus I was so excited for what we would create.

What I loved was that we truly played during our time together and made use of all the areas of their cottage. We were upstairs picking outfits and the moody light just had my creative juices flowing. I suggested we start there and there we did, in fact, start. Those photos are actually some of my favourites too. It’s funny how those unplanned moments can sometimes be the best. That’s often why I’m such a big advocate of having a loose plan, or not planning it to the oomph degree because then there is no room for magic.

We moved through all the areas of the cottage, to the dock, into the water—and we just played.

This session really was a heartwarming one. I hope you’ll love it as much as I do!

If you are a mama wanting to document your time with your babes—just doing those little things you do at the cottage, or at home—that’s all you need to do, just embrace those sweet real moments and invite me to come to capture it in all its beauty.