Your Bump Is Not a Before Photo — A Letter to Every Pregnant Woman From a Mother Who Knows

I want to ask you something.

When your child is 18 years old — sitting across from you at a dinner table, taller than you expected, somehow both a stranger and the person you know better than anyone in the world — what will you want to show them?

Not the scan photos. Not the hospital bracelet. Not the blurry iPhone selfie you took at 32 weeks in the bathroom mirror.

A real photograph. Of you. Carrying them. Glowing, exhausted, enormous, radiant, terrified, excited — all of it. The whole complicated, extraordinary truth of what it felt like to be pregnant with them specifically.

I don't have that photograph.

My son turns 18!!! in two days and there is not a single image of me pregnant with him. Not one.

I know what that absence feels like. I know the specific ache of reaching a milestone and realising the moment wasn't documented — not because nobody cared, but because I never thought I was worth stopping for.

That's why I do what I do.

Your bump is not the before.

We live in a culture that treats pregnancy as a waiting room. The before photo. The "just wait until the baby arrives"chapter. Something to get through rather than something to celebrate.

But here's what nobody tells you until it's too late:

This chapter is the moment. This is the one that disappears fastest. The baby will be photographed thousands of times. The newborn shoot, the first smile, the first birthday — all documented, all celebrated.

But you — the woman who carried them, who changed completely to bring them here, whose body did something miraculous for nine months — you deserve to be in those photographs too.

Not as a backdrop. As the main subject.

What I want for you

I want you to have a photograph that stops you in your tracks twenty years from now.

One where you look at it and think — that was me. I was there. I celebrated that.

A photograph your child can look at and see the woman you were before you became their mother. The full, complicated, beautiful person who existed before they arrived and who was changed forever by their coming.

That's what a maternity session with me looks like.

We spend time together in my studio. By the end of the day you would feel you had a spa day without the mud. I have a collection of beautiful gowns for you to choose from. Hair and makeup is available. Everything is taken care of so you can simply arrive and be present.

No posing instructions. No awkward directions. Just you, looked after- with images at the end that will matter for the rest of your life.

If you're pregnant right now — please don't wait.

Don't wait until you feel ready. Don't wait until you feel smaller or bigger or more confident or less tired.

This moment is happening right now. And it is worth documenting.

Sessions available from £345. I have availability in July and August.

Simply reply to this email and we'll have a chat — no pressure, no commitment, just a conversation about what you're looking for.

I can't wait to hear from you.

Edina x

P.S. If you know someone who is pregnant right now — please forward this to them. You might be giving them something they'll treasure for the rest of their life.