This post is probably going to be a bit of an overshare! If you’ve followed me on social media, then you may know I’m just coming back from maternity leave. So yeah, it has taken me a little while to do this blog post. I’ve mostly just been attempting to sleep whenever I can.

I do want to share a little bit about my birth story first. This little guy wasn’t due until April 23. However, I developed preeclampsia and was admitted to the hospital on March 25 when I was on my last day of being 35 weeks gestation. I had gained 9lbs in a week (fluid!) and the protein in my urine (TMI I know) started escalating. Because preeclampsia can take a turn for the worse very fast, I was admitted with the goal to deliver April 2 when I hit 37 weeks which is considered early term. However, the Friday after I was admitted, at 36 weeks 3 days gestation, my blood pressure started escalating. The nurse came in to take my blood pressure, wasn’t real happy, and disappeared. She came back less than 10 minutes later asking how fast my husband could get to the hospital.

He’d gone to get our oldest child, but I called him to come back and he was there within an hour. They’d had an emergency c-section ahead of mine, but from the time the nurse told me to call him to the time my newest little man made his appearance was at most 4 hours. Fortunately one of my best friends was at the hospital keeping me company while Joey was gone and she sat with me during my freak out over having to have another c-section.

At 7:04 pm Friday night, Lukas, made his appearance. My blood pressure didn’t start dropping as fast as it needed to. It stabilized temporarily and then continued to climb. I spent the night with the shakes after the spinal and didn’t get to get up and walk as expected. The next morning, I was hooked to a magnesium drip to prevent seizures where I stayed for 24 hours.

After coming off the drip, my blood pressure was still too high and I had to stay in the hospital until the following Wednesday when I was finally released after 10 days in the hospital and 5 days after giving birth. Lukas was actually discharged a day before I was.

My blood pressure was still high, and I was taking meds for it, but it took a while for it to come down to normal for me (its always been a touch high).

With the preeclampsia, I was packing so much fluid, I lost 51 pounds within a week of leaving the hospital. I wish I had a camera to capture the way my doctors eyes bugged out when she saw the difference!

Between having a newborn and being very worried about my blood pressure, it has taken me a little while to feel somewhat normal and return to things like shooting and blogging.

I will say this, doing Lukas’ newborn session a week after having a c-section was a million times easier than trying to shoot being 35 weeks pregnant and packing all the extra fluid I had.

So here he is. My newest little man. I’m now the proud momma of two boys who just happen to be 11 years apart. And big brother adores his little brother.

This image is one of my favorites and was taken a couple weeks later.

And here’s my little man at one month old. His nursery is the woodland theme delicately accented with the lumberjack plaid so that’s how we shot his one month photos.