She showed up in heels. Seven and a half months pregnant. Finishing a Master’s degree. Equal parts fierce and elegant and unapologetically over the top—in the best way. She’s not the ethereal earth goddess type, and you won’t catch her doing bare belly pics in a flower crown. But regal? Oh yes. Proud? Absolutely—and she should be. This was a session to mark two monumental things: the baby girl growing inside her, and the academic milestone she conquered with grit, discipline, and (as she’d tell you) an unrelenting Google Calendar. She’s a first-generation graduate, earning both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees—and now she’s preparing to meet the smol lady who kicked her through it all (she says with a wink).
Tell me about the anticipation of baby’s arrival.
I suppose we’re getting to know each other, still feeling one another out, literally and figuratively. Right now she’s a roommate that I can’t see, but I get to feel stomping around the house at all hours of the night. My anticipation is definitely fervent, the idea of holding her little hands and seeing her face and her eyes as they take in her new world brings a warmth to my heart that hypothermic victims can only dream about.
How many weeks are you?
33 weeks, so 16.5 Serbo-Bulgarian Wars, 28 Apollo 11 missions, or the Lord of the Rings Director’s Trilogy 458 times.
What is on your “to do” list before she arrives?
Watch old episodes of Forensic Files while I frenetically get the nursery together after severely underestimating the time it takes to put all of the furniture together while occasionally pausing to get misty eyed at her small socks.
Tell me the challenges of completing your Masters Degree while pregnant. Tell me the joys.
Challenges, easy. First trimester sleepiness is not conducive to weekly essays and 48 page research reports, -2/10 do not recommend. Acute neurological and short term memory impacts are much more apparent when you’re tracking 30 thousand deadlines a week. In summation, if it wasn’t on my calendar, it did not happen.
Joys, if it’s going to suck either way you might as well get the biggest bang for your buck. Even without the degree requirements, pregnancy is no joke, so it’s pretty neat growing myself in two different ways, physiologically and neurologically. Quite literally, I get to watch her grow with me. And alas, the biggest joy was creating an event on my calendar to throw all of my schoolwork into an incinerator, 15/10.
How do you plan to use your degree?
First and foremost, I plan to parade this academic achievement in a superciliously patrician manner, perhaps I bombastically and ever-so-modestly create an exact replica of my diploma to sit in a central location amongst typical office chaff, where it lies unadorned with a coffee ring, where the exact paper I need for this meeting just so happens to be sitting underneath, thereby elucidating its gravitas, while inciting what will surely amount to the commencement of utter transfixation.
And if the marching of time permits me I shall use it to elevate my status in the professional realm by meeting and excelling occupational posting requirements.
She brought her whole self to this session—intellect, humor, strength, and style. What an honor to celebrate not just what she’s accomplished, but who she is. A force. A scholar. A soon-to-be mother with a smol lady on the way… and heels still on her feet.
Enjoy your sneak peek!
-Jamie
Parker, Colorado Maternity Photographer
Telling YOUR Story
