In February of 2013 we found out we were expecting our first little baby. Overcome with excitement, we knew from the very beginning that we wanted to know the gender. I, for one, can’t stand surprises (every year I try to get our family to open all of their gifts Christmas Eve lol) and couldn’t wait to plan out every detail of the nursery and the cute little outfits that baby Schulze would wear. Even though my hubby loves surprises, he was eager to know the gender as well, since in his opinion it would add to the excitement if he knew that he would be having a catch with his son one day or watching his daughter’s dance recitals. I hadn’t considered doing a gender reveal (and didn’t even know it was a thing) until good ‘ol Pinterest enlightened me. Not only did I think it was the cutest idea ever, but what better way to capture one of the best moments of your life? I sought out Sherry of Cool Breeze Photography of NC (check out her portfolio and her blog here, she is amazing!) for a mini-session to take place on June 1st (a whole 10 days after the anatomy ultrasound was to take place, people thought I was nuts for waiting but I’m glad, it was so worth it!). As planned, on May 22nd we went for our anatomy ultrasound and got to see our sweet, healthy baby sucking on it’s thumb (so cute, even cuter is that P still sucks his thumb) and the technician wrote the gender on a little piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope. Into my purse it went and there it would sit until the day of the reveal! Come June 1st we took our giant box to our local party store and had them fill it with pink or blue balloons while we waited in the car (I was TERRIFIED that somehow they were going to ruin the surprise for us but they came through big time!). After finishing at the party store we headed down to a cute little horse farm in Hampstead where our session was to take place, I remember us thinking how crazy it was that sitting in the back of the car was the answer to a question we had been asking for 21 weeks! There is no way to describe the feeling right before we opened that box, it was that kind of nervous excitement that makes you feel like you’re having an out of body experience, like right before you walk down the aisle at your wedding or when the roller coaster makes its ascent just before the crazy ride is about to begin. Call it mother’s intuition but I knew we were having a boy right from the start, I don’t know why, I just did. J swore that we were having a girl but says that right when we place the box in front of us to open it, he just knew it was a boy as well.

I am SO, SO glad we have these pictures as a memento of one of the most exciting days of our lives. If you’re planning on finding out the gender of your child anyway and aren’t super private people, I highly recommend doing a gender reveal of some sort (if you’ve been on Pinterest for even one millisecond I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of gender reveal ideas, lol). Also if you’d like to save money (which you should be since the journey of parenthood is an expensive one, haha) have a friend take the pictures or better yet, videotape it. Hope you enjoy these pictures as much as we did 🙂