Our Rainbow Baby Maternity Photos || Winsome + Wright

This moment right here. Being pregnant with our sweet rainbow baby brings me such a joy that it could ONLY be created by God himself. I am so in love with this family that we created, both in heaven and here Earth side. If I could bundle up my emotions and express to you all of my feelings into this one blog post, it would end up being a novel. Losing our twin boys was, without a doubt, the hardest moment in our lives but what sweet sweet love Jesus has for us to give us a rainbow in the middle of our storm. How incredible is He to never give up on us, to have a perfect plan for our lives. I told myself that before I turned 24, I would be married with about three kids. How miraculous that it came true. I’m a mama to three, not in the way I had expected it to be but in a way that God knew it would be. His way hasn’t been the easiest ON me but it’s the best FOR me. After losing my babies I thought I would have a heart of coal but oh how opposite that came to be. MY heart is FILLED with the love of the Holy Spirit. I look at things more beautiful than I did before, brighter than I did before. It took some time, these feelings didn’t happen overnight by any means. I had to walk through a valley of darkness, hand in hand with the devil himself to get to the top of the mountain where I currently reside. This rocky path to becoming a mother was HARD. The moments of complete defeat and isolation smothered me. I was certain that God forgot about me, forgot about my dreams of becoming a mother. He KNEW the kind of mother I needed to be and knew what it had to take to get me there. HE answered prayers I didn’t even know I had.

 

Thank you Jesus for all the moments it took to get me right here. The good, the bad, the heartbreaking….just Thank you for loving me the way that you do. Thank you for my husband Wyatt and our heavenly boys , Asa and Armie and for our rainbow baby. I LOVE this family of mine.

 

BIG THANK YOU to Winsome + Wright for always capturing the sweetest moments of my life. I love our friendship more than words.

 

With love,

Karissa Marie

Our In-Home Maternity Shoot


We have less than a month to go until we meet our sweet, sweet baby. We could not be more thankful and more thrilled to become parents to our rainbow. We’ve been running around like crazy prepping for this baby. My third trimester has FLOWN by because everyday is jammed packed with things to finish before our little one gets here. Our nursery is about 90% complete, we just have a few little things here and there. We just had our baby shower this past Sunday which was an absolute dream come true. It took a team of people to accomplish and took a lot of prep time but the end result was absolutely something out of a movie! I can’t thank my friends and family enough for all their love and support. (Might put up a blog post about it. What do you think?)

While running a business, prepping for our baby, finishing house projects and trying to find time for our family and friends, Wyatt and I have forgotten about JUST US for a minute there. The only time I can think of where him and I can just breathe, cuddle and relax is right before bed and Sunday mornings. We’ve gotten a little distracted by all that’s going on in our lives to give our relationship a little TLC. I get so emotional when I think about how Wyatt and I have had the pleasure of being just him and I for 9 years. I’m so thankful for every memory with him and the journey it took for us to get right where we are. Now we embark on a new chapter of our lives and no I’m not crying while typing this, you are. Everything is about to change, it’s not just going to be us TWO anymore and there’s something so bittersweet about that.

Wyatt, I love you. I love the special time we’ve had together before becoming parents. I love every bit of our love story so far from our late night phone conversations when we were just 14 years old, to that time by your pond in your backyard when you first told me you loved me, to the car rides where we blasted the music and sang our hearts out even though you and I can’t sing at all, to that one time you proposed to me in Times Square, to our first dance at our wedding, to our big road trip across the country and struggling to pay rent in NYC, to the birth of our angel baby boys…to right now. I’ve loved it all. As we close this chapter and welcome in a new one, I just want to say that I love you beyond words and I cannot wait to see you as a daddy. You’re going to be so amazing at it.

BIG thank you to my dear friend, Nicolette from NicoletteYoung.Com for capturing our last moments as just the two of us in our home. We are so blessed to know her and call her our friend.

With love,

Karissa Marie

 

Nicolette Young Photography

Bumpin’ In Polka Dots

 

My 3rd Trimester has been my favorite trimester so far. I’m sure I’ll be biting my tongue here in a few weeks for saying that but I truly think this pregnancy has overall been MAGICAL and I’m very grateful that. I know I’m going to miss this sweet bump so much. Styling it has come with it’s challenges. I really felt limited with what I could wear because I only wanted to be comfortable in my leggings and oversized sweaters. I was able to capture these photos when I was feeling perky and stylish but trust me, this wasn’t the norm.

I’m in love with this look because this fun polka-dot print dress is actually NON-MATERNITY. It just barely fits my growing bump. SCORE! I can’t wait to wear it after baby too! I loved this look so much, I just needed to blog about it. 😉

 

Karissa Marie

P.S. We’re just a handful of weeks form meeting baby! We are so excited we can hardly stand it.

 

SHOP MY LOOK

HAT | DRESS | SHOES | FOUNDATION | LIPSTICK– KINDA SEXY

Officially In My 3rd Trimester

Hello friends, I’ve almost forgotten how to blog. It’s been a minute since we’ve last spoke and I’m sorry about that. Life got a little crazy there for a moment from moving back to my hometown, getting settled into our new home, getting a job, quitting said job, seeing a fertility specialist, getting pregnant with our rainbow baby and all the worries and joys that come along with a pregnancy after a pregnancy loss. I’ve been mentally occupied to say the least but it’s so refreshing to be here, typing to you. I’m thankful for all of your support along the way. Your words of encouragement and just the simple “Hey, just checking in on you” posts have been really special to me. Thank you.

My little pregnancy update:

I’m officially in my third trimester. 28 weeks. I can’t believe we’ve made it this far. This baby has no idea the love that’s waiting for him/her. We are beyond thankful for each day with our baby bear. We don’t take a second of this pregnancy for granted. As most of you know, we lost our twin baby boys, Asa and Armie last March and it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions, grief and acceptance. It’s been a hard journey to get to where we are now but we are thankful…oh so thankful for the promise that God gave us. Our rainbow.

This pregnancy has been more mentally and emotionally challenging than physically. In fact this baby has REALLY taken it easy on it’s mama. I never had bad morning sickness, just a little queasy for a couple of weeks in the beginning and a massive headache that lasted two months but nothing I couldn’t handle. I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum with the boys and I thought that feeling THAT awful was normal in pregnancy. Turns out it’s NOT normal at all. I kept on calling my doctor in panic and saying “I should be feeling worse, something is wrong.” No, nothing was wrong at all, I was just having a normal, healthy pregnancy with fewer pregnancy symptoms.

We’ve had a couple of little scares this pregnancy mostly because my husband and I are very paranoid this go around, understandably. One of the many scares was that our doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat around 13 weeks which was clearly very traumatizing for us. We felt like everything was unfolding again, just like the last time. We sat in the waiting room in complete silence and I just looked at Wyatt and said ” We have to pray”…and that’s all we did. I’ve repeatedly said, probably over a million times this pregnancy, “God, let your will be done. Whatever your plan is for this baby, let it be done.”  I found such comfort in knowing that my Savior, the one that died for me, the one that has forgiven me time and time again, the one that gave me my twin boys and the one that gave me my rainbow baby was never going to let me down. He had a miraculous plan for my life and he wasn’t stopping there. We went into our emergency ultrasound and baby was absolutely perfect. He/She was kicking away saying “Hey mom and dad, I’m not going anywhere.” We even got a shot of them sucking on their thumb. We cried a lot that day…but they were only happy tears. Praise God. 

We’ve had a few spontaneous doctor visits along the way because I wasn’t feeling baby move as much or just needed reassurance that everything was okay. I get in my head a little too often and it ends up doing more bad than good but thankfully I have a team of doctors that are beyond understanding and are willing to do anything for my mental health even if that means seeing them once a week to hear the heartbeat. Wyatt and I ended up buying our own doppler because these past couple of weeks have been really stressful. We needed the comfort of knowing that we could grab the doppler whenever we needed to check on baby at any time of day or night. I highly recommend getting one.

About two weeks ago Wyatt and I rushed to the ER at midnight. I had regular cold symptoms, GERD symptoms and baby was pushing up into my lungs and I just COULD NOT breathe. I had 3 or 4 massive panic attacks that night. The doctor gave me what he could to help with my GERD issues and put me on oxygen but other than that, I just had to deal with the discomfort. It was awful and I never want to experience that again. I feel much, much better now, just taking it really easy on myself from here on out. Since then I’ve been battling a little bit of anxiety and depression. It kind of just popped up out of nowhere, truly at the worst time. Some of you may not know that I’ve struggled mentally my whole life, however, I’ve really been able to manage my mental health for the past two years and then boom: Darkness hit me when all I wanted was to be happy. I’m thankful for my husband for being so understanding and doing everything he can to make me feel better. Also shout out to my friends that stay consistently amazing. They keep me laughing and keep my mind busy. That’s all I need right now.  

There have been plenty of moments where God has really put us in our place, forcing us to trust Him. We’ve landed on our knees in prayer more times than I can even count in the last 7 months. We’ve really had to let go and let God on this baby and it’s taught us so much. We are going to be AWESOME parents, I know that for sure. I’m thankful to God for this challenge if it means I’ll be a better mother because of it.

Here’s some fun little updates:

How Far Along: 28 weeks

Sex Of Baby: We’re not finding out but interested in hearing what you think it might be!

Name: We have a couple names picked but I need to meet baby before I really know what name it’s meant to have.

Total Weight Gain: 20 Pounds (Getting sick really set me back a few pounds, I’m working hard to gain that weight back.)

Maternity Clothes: I haven’t been able to live without them since my first trimester. I live in my maternity black leggings!

Stretch Marks? None yet.

Sleep: It’s pretty consistent nowadays. I have to flip over every hour or so and then fall right back to sleep. Really looking forward to tummy sleeping again!

Movement: I can’t keep tabs on this baby. Some days it’s VERY active with big rolls and kicks to the ribs and other days it sleeps like it’s in hibernation or something.

Current Cravings: Chocolate Covered Strawberries but give me anything and I’ll eat it.

Belly Button In Or Out? Halfway in, halfway out. Makes me laugh.

Best Thing That Happened This Week? Beginning my 3rd trimester has been pretty relieving and exciting. Simple things like feeling baby’s kicks makes me feel better every single time. Lastly, the nursery is coming together nicely. Just a few little things needed to have it complete!

That’s all for now! I’ll do another update in a month or so! I wanna do a nursery tour as well as a ‘What’s In My Hospital Bag’ post so be on the lookout for those. Love you all!

 

 

My Outfit

Maternity Jeans Under $35 | Top

 

Xoxo,

Karissa Marie