A few months late, but I am finally sharing my first trimester recap! I’m currently 21 weeks into my pregnancy and life has been so busy. Luckily during a lot of my first trimester, I was able to take things slow, take naps, and meditate which was much needed because of all the symptoms I was feeling (more on that later in this post). Going into my second trimester, life got much busier! Between creating content for my social media business, researching + creating a baby registry, pregnancy symptoms, pregnancy appointments, trying to make time for self care, and making time for my relationship… my plate has been super full. I’m hoping things will slow down a little bit soon and I’m trying to focus on how lucky I am to be pregnant. Getting back to it, in this bog post, I wanted to share some of the pregnancy symptoms I experienced, things that helped with them, and my must have items for the first trimester!
Category: My Life
I have been dying to share our baby’s gender since we announced our pregnancy two weeks ago. It’s usually recommended to wait until you are past the first trimester to share pregnancy news. We waited until I was about 4 months pregnant and it was so hard keeping it a secret because I wanted to shout it from the rooftops but we wanted to make sure our risk of miscarriage was far enough behind us after having had an early miscarriage when we first started trying to get pregnant. I have known the baby’s gender for about a month now so the wait to share that news was much shorter at least!
Our Desert Pregnancy Announcement Photoshoot
By Esperanza on August 12, 2023I’m so happy to finally be able to share our wonderful news: WE’RE PREGNANT! Schyler and I have been wanting this for quite awhile now and I have wanted to be a mom since I was a little girl, so I’m thrilled to finally be starting this journey into motherhood. It has been so hard keeping this a secret but I’m so excited to be sharing more about my pregnancy moving forward!
I was scrolling through my camera roll this week and remembered I hadn’t yet posted these lingerie photos Schyler took for me a few months back. I debated whether or not to share these because I know being too “sexy” in photos can be a little controversial. I was raised Catholic so there is a part of me that always feels a little uncomfortable about sexuality and things of that nature. All that aside, as a woman, I’m very proud of my body and looking at these photos makes me feel empowered, confident, and beautiful. I turned 30 this year and I am at the point in my life where I care less what other people think and more about doing whatever makes me feel happy and good about myself. That kind of freedom is a thing of beauty.
Life Update & Why We Chose To Wait To Move To Las Vegas
By Esperanza on April 21, 2023I am finally getting around to sharing this blog post that I have been meaning to sit down and write! If you have been following along on our moving journey here on the blog or on socials, you may be wondering what happened to our plan to leave Pittsburgh and move to Las Vegas! You can read more about the pros and cons of this decision in this blog post here. I’ve addressed this on my Instagram here and in this YouTube vlog that Schyler and I filmed, but I wanted to share a life update on here as well as I have gotten so many questions about it!
I’m so excited to finally be sharing this beautiful bridal photo shoot that Schyler and I worked so hard on! This is the exciting photo shoot that I had been hinting at over the past few months on socials and finally got the chance to edit. We were battling with the wind at our photo location the day of the shoot (which kept knocking over our baskets lol) but I am so happy with how these photos turned out. I know that Schyler and I will cherish these photos forever and I love that we will be able to show them to our kids one day with pride!
Focusing On Mental Health With Yoga & Meditation
By Esperanza on February 12, 2023Over the past few years I’ve been doing a lot of work on my mental health, physical health, and overall wellness. I have always been an anxious person but I also struggle with depression and PTSD due to childhood traumas. One thing I’ve always known since I was a little girl is that I want to be a mommy (very badly), which is why I felt it was important to start putting in extra work into healing those emotional scars, so I can be the best version of myself for my child. I still have a lot of work to do, it’s definitely a journey and it may take years to really “heal” some childhood wounds, but I’m proud of myself for making it a priority. We hope to start our family very soon, so I’m going to be focusing in on this even more.
Boho Denim & Lingerie Loft Photo Shoot + My Reflections
By Esperanza on January 17, 2023I asked my fiance Schyler to shoot a few lingerie photos for me in our Pittsburgh loft apartment just before we moved. I’m turning 30 next year and we plan to start our family very soon which made me realize that I had never captured myself/my body in this way before. I guess I always felt too embarrassed to take “sexy” photos like these, thinking I would look like I was trying to get attention, or maybe it’s the traditional Catholic values I was raised with that made me feel too ashamed to pose for photos like these. But over the years I’ve learned so much and grown a lot and I am very proud of the strong, independent, (yet very sensitive), and yes BEAUTIFUL woman that I am today and that deserves to be celebrated!
Life Update: We’re Moving To Las Vegas & Our 2023 Goals
By Esperanza on December 19, 2022I thought it was about time to share another life update on here with you guys and just in time because we finally decided to move forward on something we have been talking about for over a year now… we are moving to Las Vegas! I know it seems kind of sudden, but we have been deliberating this move for months now and for so many reasons so I thought I would spill the details in this blog post! Although it’s the holidays and the next few weeks are going to be crazy, it will be so worth it and we can’t wait to “put down roots” there.
Fall is in full peak here in Pittsburgh with a kaleidoscope of autumnal colors everywhere! We live very close to Highland Park in Pittsburgh’s East End so we decided to head there to take a few fall photos this season. The trees looked so beautiful and made the perfect backdrop for our little photo session. My boys looked so handsome and Schyler took some cute shots of just Indio and mommy too!