You are three days from a session, running on very little sleep, and at some point tonight you will lie awake wondering whether your baby will sleep, whether the house is tidy enough, and whether you should have bought something to wear. Almost none of that matters. This is what does.
Book earlier than feels necessary
Most families reach out somewhere in the second or third trimester. That is not because studios are trying to lock you in early — it is because newborn dates cannot work like ordinary appointments. Your baby will arrive when they arrive, and a photographer who has held a loose window around your due date can move with that. A photographer trying to slot you in from scratch at nine days old often cannot.
If your baby is already here and nobody has booked anything, do not assume you have missed it. Get in touch anyway. Sessions happen at two weeks, at four weeks, at two months. They look different from each other, and none of them is the wrong version.
Holding a window around your due date is the single most useful thing you can do.
Check availabilityThe morning of
Two things genuinely help, and they are both small.
Keep your baby a little awake beforehand if you reasonably can — a bath, a nappy change, some time unwrapped. A baby who has been awake for a stretch settles more deeply once they are warm and fed. Do not turn this into a project. If they sleep the whole way over, that is fine too.
Feed as late as possible. Ideally the last full feed happens at the studio, right at the start, so your baby goes into the session heavy and content. There will be more feeds during it. That is expected and planned for.
Dress your baby in something loose with poppers or a zip — a sleepsuit rather than anything that has to go over the head. Skip the tight nappy elastic and the sock cuffs; they leave marks that take twenty minutes to fade. Bring a spare nappy of a size up if you have one, because the marks are the only thing on this list that shows in photographs.
What to actually bring
- More feeds than you think you need — and if you are bottle feeding, one more bottle than that
- A soother, if your baby will take one. It is one of the most useful tools in a newborn session, and no, it does not have to appear in the photographs
- A spare outfit for the baby, and a spare top for whoever is holding them
- Nappies, wipes, and a muslin for your shoulder
- Anything small that means something to your family — a blanket someone knitted, a piece of jewellery, a bracelet, something passed down. These become the photographs you did not know you wanted
You do not need to bring wraps, headbands, baskets, blankets or props. A studio that photographs newborns properly has all of that, cleaned between sessions, chosen to work together.
What to wear
Soft, plain, and quiet. Cream, oatmeal, stone, warm grey, muted earth tones. Coordinate with each other rather than matching exactly. Avoid large logos, bold stripes and anything with a slogan, because in fifteen years the photograph should look like your family rather than like a particular season of a particular shop.
Then the practical part everyone forgets: you will be holding, feeding and lifting a newborn for a couple of hours. Wear something you can move in, and if you are breastfeeding, something you can feed in without a full costume change. There is a fuller guide in what parents should wear for newborn family photos.
Preparing a sibling
Tell them the plan in advance, in the plainest possible terms: we are going to a room with a camera, someone is going to take pictures of the baby, then some pictures of you, and then we are going home. Children handle almost anything if they know its shape.
Two things make sibling photographs work. First, photograph them early, in the first twenty minutes, while they are still interested. Second, do not make holding the baby the price of admission. A three-year-old who does not want to hold a newborn should not be made to, and the photograph of them peering over the edge of the basket is usually better anyway.
Bring a snack and something quiet for them to do afterwards. If someone can take them home once their part is done, that is often the kindest arrangement for everybody.
What the session is actually like
Slower than you expect. A newborn session is measured in hours, not minutes, and most of those hours are not spent photographing. They are spent feeding, settling, warming, waiting, and starting again. That is the work.
The room is kept warm — warmer than adults find comfortable, because a baby without clothes loses heat quickly. Bring a t-shirt. The lighting is soft. There is usually white noise. Your job for large parts of it is to sit down and let someone else worry.
You can read the whole sequence in what actually happens during a newborn session, or see how it is structured on the experience.
What if the baby cries
They will. Nearly every newborn cries at some point in a session, and it changes nothing.
When a baby is unsettled, the session stops. They get fed, changed, held, warmed, walked around the room. Then it starts again. A session that pauses three times is not a difficult session; it is a normal one, and the schedule already has room in it for exactly that. Nothing gets rushed to make up time, because rushing a newborn produces photographs that look rushed.
The camera waits. Your baby does not have to perform.
Things you can stop worrying about
- Baby acne, peeling skin, dry patches, jaundice, scratches and cradle cap. All of it is ordinary, all of it is temporary, and all of it is retouched. Do not delay a session over skin
- Your own face. Every parent says some version of "please do not photograph me". You will want those photographs later more than any of the others. Two or three frames, that is all
- The umbilical stump. It is either there or it is not. It is not a problem either way
- A messy house, if the session is at home. The photographs are made in whichever corner has the best light, and everything else gets moved out of frame in ninety seconds
- Being late. Newborn mornings do not run to time. Message ahead and the session simply starts later
The week before, in one list
- Confirm the date and the address, and put the studio’s number in your phone
- Choose what you are wearing and try it on once, so it is not a decision on the day
- Wash any family piece you want photographed — the blanket, the shawl, the bracelet
- Pack the bag the night before and leave it by the door
- Decide who is coming, and tell the studio so there is time set aside for them
- Sleep, if the baby allows it, which is a joke every parent is entitled to ignore
And then stop preparing. The photographs that end up on the wall are almost never the ones anyone planned — they are your baby stretching, a hand on a shoulder, someone laughing at something out of frame. Those cannot be arranged. They only happen when the room is calm and nobody is in a hurry.
Your baby’s first days are already moving faster than you think.
Check availability
