Overflowing with JOY to share this Mill Creek Park maternity session with you today!  Freddy and Danyelle are two of my greatest friends in life, and have been IN my life longer than out of it!  15+ years of friendship that began in our church youth group, so you can imagine all the memories made in that span of time!  Of all the photographs I have taken of them over the years though, these are my favorite.  As I sit here trying to think of how I can best share their fertility story + faithfulness, I realized that Danyelle already said it best when she shared their pregnancy news on Facebook.  With her permission, I am including her encouraging words here with their maternity portraits. May you be encouraged and reminded of how great God is when you read this story, and REJOICE with Freddy and Danyelle at the coming of Baby H in just a few more weeks!  And I know without a doubt that when I get to snuggle that little babe and take his newborn portraits, I’ll be telling you that THOSE are my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken for the Henins, and I won’t be wrong :)

“Out of Difficulties Grow Miracles” 
Over the last two years, Freddy and I have lived out difficulty after difficulty. We have cried countless days and nights, asked God a million times “Why us?” and have had more doubts than I’d like to admit. As hard as this journey has been to this point, we have experienced more miracles and divinely appointed moments from God than ever before. Here’s a sort of short version of our journey:

In the Fall of 2017 we found out this journey to parenthood was going to look a little different for us. After 3 failed IUI’s at the beginning of 2018, our doctor advised us to move ahead with IVF. Just hearing those three letters made me cry… I didn’t want to wait the time it took to go through that whole process. I didn’t want to have to take all those shots – quite frankly, I was terrified at just the thought of it all! But, over the course of the next 10 months, I experienced true God-given strength that I never thought I could have! In June of last year, we had our first unsuccessful IVF Transfer. We were more than devastated, but God carried us forward. After a few more months of additional testing, we finally were able to do our 2nd IVF transfer this past January! And we are SO Blessed, Thankful and more than Ready to announce that…

WE ARE HAVING A BABY!!!! ????????????????????
God is FAITHFUL to answer our prayers and FAITHFUL to fulfill His promises!!

Mill Creek Park Maternity Session | Youngstown OH | Freddy + Danyelle

I got to snap these photos of Freddy and Dee back in March, when they were ready to share their pregnancy news with the world! We took these in the room that will be the nursery for Baby Henin in just a few weeks!

And months later, we got to document their pregnancy and that beautiful bump on a perfect August day!  Such a glorious evening in Mill Creek Park!

Purple is Freddy and Dee’s signature color, so this field of tall grasses and purple flowers (weeds? Who knows, but it’s beautiful!) was just calling our name!

My favorite picture of you Dee!!!

And throwing two more memories in to this post as well!  We had just had Hazel and Freddy and Dee brought us dinner one night back in February to meet her. We opened a gift bag of adorable outfits for Hazel, and a sweet card too!  Inside the card was THE BEST NEWS EVER!!!!  There’s a video somewhere of Ben and I crying like babies reading the card, but it’s probably better if that just stays in the Henin archives, haha!

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