New Beginnings and Sympathy Pains

The Baby Photographer

Sympathy Pains

Published on Wednesday, 15 January 2014 12:00

Last Updated on 14 January 2014

Michael Shilling

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So let me start at the beginning, well perhaps not the complete beginning but at some point not so long ago.

October was a busy month for me and one that changed my business completely. At the start of the month we discussed the possibility of opening a portrait studio in a soft play centre with its owners, by the second week of the month we had hired builders and were busy knocking down walls.

Check out Building The Studio – Turning a Store Room into a Photography Studio if you want to see what we did.

We needed to spend most days on site and there were plenty of late nights plastering and painting walls. The target was to open by November 1st.

3 days before opening and with still plenty of work to do I was on site, working late when I received a call followed by a text (to provide evidence of course) of my wife’s positive pregnancy test.

 

 

As my business was about to give birth to its first studio my wife would soon give birth to….. a baby I guess.

There are times in life when everything goes wrong all at the same time, this was the polar opposite. Let’s just say both our pregnancy and a studio were a long time coming and having them both happen at the same time must be down to some sort of planetary alignment or something.

 

A lot has happened since then but I’ll give you the highlights.

1. Had some blood tests

2. Had some early scans and at 8 weeks we even saw some movement which led to nickname our foetus ‘dancing baby’

3. My wife started going to bed at 9:30pm and to show support so did I. Although I would end up watching films on Netflix till gone midnight. TED talks has now become a new favourite of mine.

4. Told parents, parents cried.

5. Told friends, friends bought me drinks and made ahhhh noises towards my wife.

6. Had 12 week scan and baby was making shapes and popping some crazy moves.

7. Made it official……..on Facebook.

 

Fast forward to today the beginning of this article series titled Sympathy pains. Apparently they are real and I can expect to have cravings and put on weight so I’m looking forward to that.

As for putting on weight I’ll have to get back into riding my bike to work and take that juicer out of the cupboard!

 

What I hope to achieve with this little series is of course a man’s perspective on pregnancy but with the twist being the man is a baby photographer who has a studio in a play centre. You’d think I’d be put off wouldn’t you?

I do remember ONCE a parent asked if I had children and when I replied no he said “you should, it’s great”. Last week another parent just plain outright told me DONT HAVE CHILDREN! Another held his phone out to the sound of screaming and told me “That’s what you’ve got to look forward to, you can’t give them back at the end of the day”.

 

Due date is July 10th so till then you can expect hear about all the fun of pregnancy, if you have children or are pregnant I hope you can relate, if you are planning a family I hope you don’t get scared!

Either way I will do my best to amuse you, till next week.

 

Michael Shilling is a baby and family portrait photographer at Memory Gate Photography he is due to become a father for the first time on 10th July 2014