Newborn Photography

Before our daughter was born, I had many ambitions about taking photos of her first few days of life. I created a whole Pinterest board with ideas and poses I had planned for her. I also spent hours reading blog posts on the subject. Well,  it is safe to say, I had no idea what I was in for. Being a new mother I found it hard to find the time to eat and sleep… never mind spend time taking specific pictures!

As an experimental photographer, I felt I had failed myself. As a mother I felt guilty! In the past I have spent hours photographing buildings, plants, bridges, trees, waterfalls, food, etc. How could I not take the time to photograph my own newborn?!

It was very important for me to have images of our daughter in her first few weeks of life. I was running out of time. If I couldn’t take the photos then it was time to hire a professional!

I contacted Rachel Brencur Photography. I was lucky that she had a spot open that week! After securing an appointment, I immediately felt relieved. I proceeded to relax about pictures and get some needed rest.

Rachel was amazing with our daughter! Right from the beginning, she wanted to make sure she honoured our hopes and wishes for the session. Rachel sent me a detailed survey to help me think through what I wanted and to assist her in planning  the shoot.

I am happy to say that any of my thoughts or ideas I had from Pinterest were blown away! Rachel accomplished so much more than I could have dreamed! I was so impressed with the care and professionalism I witnessed as she took photographs of our daughter. My cheeks were sore from smiling so much during the session. Rachel is like the baby whisperer! She gently moved our daughter through various poses and wardrobe changes all without causing her any stress or discomfort. I am so grateful for the pictures we now have of our daughter that we will cherish forever.

After our session I felt relieved that we had photos of our daughter in her newborn state. Since I was more relaxed, I allowed myself time to take pictures “in the moment”. My favourite kind of photography. The featured image in this post was during one of her naps. It is special to me because this is exactly how she fell asleep.

The moral of my post, hire a professional for newborn photography and work on being a mom! Knowing that “they grow up so fast”, I aim to capture many more photos as she grows. As an experimental photographer, I know I have plenty of opportunities to photograph our daughter and will refrain from putting pressure on myself.

Canning Soup and Having a Baby

My favourite soup, the one that got me through my pregnancy when I didn’t want to eat anything else, is Minestrone. But not any Minestrone soup will do. I love the Clean-Eating Minestrone Soup from The Eat-Clean Diet (2007) book.

Last August I made about 16 litres of the soup. Much of the soup was made up of vegetables from our garden. Last week, so over a year later, I finished eating the very last jar of soup. My heart sank. What soup was I going to eat now?

Lately my baking and cooking and photography and blogging efforts have been put on hold as I care for my lovely daughter. However, she is now 5 months old and taking longer naps. This allows me to get back to big batch cooking, baking, some photography (mostly of her), and blogging! Yay!

Making this soup and canning it from start to finish takes about 6 hours. Six hours when it was just me and endless summer hours on hand. I was a bit disheartened as there was no way that my daughter would (and I wouldn’t want her to) sleep while I made the soup. It was time to plan like never before for cooking!

Step 1 (Day 1): Hire Oma to babysit while I grocery shop for all of the ingredients. At this point the baby doesn’t fit in the cart with all of the groceries I needed. Unfortunately I was not able to use many vegetables from our garden this year, because let’s face it, being a new mom and gardening was too much for me! I admire you supermoms who can do it! Maybe next year.

Step 1B (Day 1-2): Prepare dried beans for overnight soak.

Step 2 (Day 2): Start cleaning and chopping chunks of produce while the baby naps.

Step 3: Baby’s up, take a break from chopping.

Step 4: Baby’s down, continue chopping.

Step 5: Baby’s up, feed and take into the kitchen to finish a batch of chopping.

Step 6: Baby’s down, keep chopping.

Step 7: Wonder if all this work is worth it.

Step 8: Finish chopping and prepping vegetables just as baby wakes up from final nap of the day!

Step 9 (Day 2-3): Once our daughter goes down for bed in the night she is very unlikely to wake up until early morning. I know, we’re very lucky! So once she went down in the evening that’s when I started cooking and then canning soup. The cooking and canning part took about 4 hours. The chopping of all the vegetables during her naps throughout the day was about 3 hours. I made a double batch so there was more chopping to do than usual. The first night I made one batch of soup (that’s all I can fit in the pot). I made a second batch of soup the next night, taking another 4 hours. My sister says I’m dedicated! I just really love this healthy soup I guess. In total I spent about 11 hours making 18 and 1/2 litres of soup! This is much longer than before, but it’s totally worth it! I got to spend time with my daughter and work around her sleep schedule to cook healthy meals for our family.

Throughout this process there was absolutely no time for food photography! The photographs from this post were taken last August when I made the soup. However, the objective of having clean-eating soup for winter was accomplished!

Here is the recipe: Healthy Minestrone Soup