Colors of Colleen

Finally sharing this much over do post of our pregnancy! As I’m writing this at the end of my 2nd trimester I’m in awe of how fast time is flying by and in a few short months we’ll be bringing home our sweet baby! I’m over the moon excited to be experiencing a healthy pregnancy and couldn’t wait to share the news back in the fall with our closest family and friends. It was so hard keeping it a secret, we didn’t share with our families until I was 16 weeks and could make the trip upstate to share in person.

Shortly before our summer vacation to Bermuda we found out we were expecting! It brought a whole new meaning to our trip together. And in all honesty, it was an emotional relief. We had been trying to conceive for about a year and were becoming concerned that something may be off. I may have been naive but I really thought being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle wouldn’t create any issues with conceiving. We didn’t have to start further further fertility testing, but that was our next step after meeting with our doctor to discuss our options. Conceiving definitely took longer than we both first thought. There were a plethora of steps we started to take to prepare both our bodies for pregnancy the moment we knew it was taking longer than expected. I had already been taking pre natal vitamins, exercising, eating healthy all around so we started doing our research into some other life style habits for both of us. There’s more to share in this area (in a future blog post on our journey toward pregnancy)

I know everyone’s situation is different, and everyone’s body is different but I wanted to normalize how common it is to face challenges with fertility and it’s not something everyone talks about enough throughout their experience.

Rewinding back to the earliest moments before actually becoming pregnant Kevin and I knew we always wanted to be parents. We’ve been together for 10 years and close to that time we started getting more serious about our family planning. Our last biggest change was taking the risk of leaving our hometown of Buffalo, NY and chasing our dreams in New York City. The past 8 years in New York have been some of the best experiences for both of us both personally and professionally, where we’ve grown so much as individuals and in a partnership together.

We’ve had phenomenal experiences traveling allover the world together before and during our married time and knew we wanted these experiences before starting a family.

Choosing a career devoting myself to the lives of children I have always been passionate in that area and knew early on and always dreamed of a family of my own. My earliest days in college and beyond I had baby sat and nannied, loving every aspect of working with children. I cannot wait to see Kevin in his new role as a father. Growing up as the oldest brother of 4 boys he’s always demonstrated an incredible amount of patience and support to his entire family.

One of my biggest fears aside from the typical early pregnancy concerns and paranoia (thanks crazy hormones) where I knew my identity would change and I’d miss our old lifestyle and relationship as just the two of us. We knew that becoming a family of three would change most parts of our lives, and we knew we wanted that change for the better. We can’t wait to welcome baby Siskar this April 2020! It will be the greatest surprise yet for us as we’re waiting until delivery to find out the sex.

Thank you to all of our family and friends who have already been so supportive throughout our journey thus far, from both near and far! Can’t wait to keep you all updated on some motherhood posts soon to come.

Huge shout out and thank you to @CailtynReilly for our gorgeous winter bump pics! If you’re in the Buffalo area I highly recommend booking an appointment with her for a special family or couples shoot. She is so talented and so down to earth to work with!