He’s doing great!  It’s crazy how fast they grow!  I feel like he’s already gotten a lot bigger since his newborn portrait session.  Time is flying by so fast!

 

 

We just kind of both liked it from the beginning.  We went back and forth on a lot of different names but his middle name, Patrick, is my grandfather’s name and I wanted to represent him because he’s really important to me and he’s done a lot of great things in his life.  He served in the Vietnam War.  I wanted to honor his name.  And with Oliver, we just like the name, and I don’t know anyone named Oliver.  I feel like when you’re thinking of names you come up with somebody you know, then you’re always thinking “Oh, I already know someone with that name.”  Neither of us knew anyone named Oliver.  I did find out it is a pretty popular name, which I didn’t know at the time.  We thought about changing it because of that, but we came back to it.  We both really liked it a lot.  

 

Lot of ups and downs.  I’m a new mom so it’s a huge learning experience.  I wasn’t planning on having a c-section, so that was a little hard at the beginning.  I didn’t really prepare for the recovery from that.  A lot of changes right at the beginning.  And the sleep deprivation is real!  Everyone always warned me about the sleep deprivation.  You don’t really know how hard the sleep deprivation is until you experience it.  But being a mom is pretty amazing!  I’m 30 years old and it’s been a long time coming having my first baby.  I wanted to travel a little bit and get started in my career before I had kids.  Being a new mom – it’s a crazy amount of love.  It’s hard to explain!  

It’s all really new to me.  Since I’m a first-time mom, but it’s just neat watching him learn every day. Just one day you wake up and he’s a whole new baby, he’s making noises for the first time, any tiny little thing he does, it gets me super excited.  Just watching him grow and learn every day is pretty cool to see.

It’s kind of hard to say my favorite thing.  Just the joy that he brings to my life every day.  

Sleep deprivataion, at least initially.  It’s just very stressful knowing that you are now, there’s now a little person who’s relying on you.  It’s a lot of responsibility all of the sudden and so it can be kind of stressful sometimes.  I guess it’s just normal for every mom to worry constantly.  You don’t want anything bad to happen and so I feel like it’s probably true for all moms, but I feel like this is going to be a lifetime of me just worrying about him all the time now.  I’m sure I’ll be more laid back as he gets older.  I think initially I’m just worried a lot all the time.  

Yes, he has.  It’s been a crazy experience because of the pandemic and everything.  There’s a lot of worry when it comes to the pandemic.  In the hospital they allow two people to be with me, so Michael was there, but my mom got to be there too, which was nice.  They just changed the rule to two people in the room about a month of so before I was due so initially it was just going to be me and Michael.  His mom, Darla, who was in the pictures, was able to meet him when we got home.  He’s also met several close family members who’ve come to visit.  

 

We love the pictures, they turned out really great.  We will definitely cherish those forever.  He’s already getting bigger so it’s nice to have the pictures from when he’s only a few weeks old.  It’s really awesome.