What Actually Happens at a Newborn Session

If the thought of a newborn session makes you panic slightly, this one's for you.

I get messages from women who are thirty-six weeks pregnant, exhausted already, and clearly weighing up whether this is one more thing they simply cannot face. And I understand that completely, because if someone had suggested a photoshoot to me two weeks after I'd given birth I'd have laughed at them and gone back to bed.

So let me tell you what actually happens. Not the version on the website. The real one.

I come to your house

Not a studio. Your house.

Which means you don't have to get anyone into a car seat, or find the changing bag, or work out where to park. You open the door in whatever you're wearing and I come in.

And you don't tidy up. I mean this genuinely and I need you to believe me. I have been in a lot of houses in the first fortnight after a baby and I have never once noticed the washing. What I notice is the light, and where the baby is, and whether you've had a cup of tea. Nothing else registers.

I bring nothing

Just a camera. That's it.

No baskets. No bean bags. No box of props.

There are photographers who do the posed, styled newborn shots beautifully. It's a proper craft, it takes real skill, and if that's the picture in your head then go and find one of them, because they will do you proud.

It simply isn't what I do.

Whatever is already in your house is what ends up in the photographs. Your bed. Your blanket. The cardigan your mother knitted before she arrived. The muslin that's been over your shoulder for a fortnight.

I'm not going to be sniffy about photographers who bring a van full of props, because plenty of people love those photographs and that's a perfectly good way to work. It's just not what I do, and it's worth knowing before you book so you're not expecting one thing and getting another.

Here's my honest reasoning. There are photographers who do the posed, styled newborn shots beautifully, and it is a proper craft. If that's the picture in your head, go and find one of them.

It simply isn't what I do. What I'm after is a photograph of your baby, in your house, in the week you brought her home. The basket adds nothing and it takes the room away.

So what you get instead is her, as she actually is. Curled up on your bed. On your chest, asleep. Her hand round your finger. Her brother peering at her with a mixture of love and deep suspicion.

The baby leads

This is the bit that surprises people most.

If she needs feeding, she gets fed, and I keep shooting or I put the camera down, whichever you'd prefer. If she needs changing, we change her. If she screams for twenty minutes and will not be consoled, we wait, and we have a cup of tea, and honestly some of the best frames come afterwards when everyone's slightly frazzled and has stopped performing.

There is no schedule. There is nothing to get through. If it takes two hours and forty minutes because she's having a day, then it takes two hours and forty minutes.

I keep sessions calm on purpose. Life with a newborn is hectic enough. I want the memory of the session to be as nice as the photographs are.

Everyone's welcome

Your partner. Your older ones, who will be delighted or appalling or both. Your mum, if she wants to be there. The dog, who will absolutely be in a photograph whether anyone plans it or not.

Some people want just them and the baby, and that's fine too. It's your house.

The bit nobody tells you: the timing

Newborn sessions happen in the first fourteen days.

That isn't a rule I made up to create urgency. It's just how babies work. After a fortnight they start to uncurl and wake up properly, and the folded-up, sleepy, brand-new thing that makes those photographs what they are has gone. Still lovely. Just different.

Which means if you message me the week your baby arrives, we're already up against it, and you'll be trying to organise a photographer on three hours' sleep, one-handed, while attempting to remember whether you've eaten today.

So book while you're pregnant. Thirty to thirty-four weeks is about right.

We don't pick a date. We pencil a window, because babies are not famous for punctuality, and I hold it for you. Then when she arrives, you send me a photo and the words "she's here", and I say congratulations and see you Thursday. That's the entire administrative process.

What it costs

Newborn Storytelling is £295. Two hours, twenty-five fully edited images, in your home, within the first fourteen days.

Bump to Baby is £495. That's the maternity session and the newborn session together, fifty images across the two, and it saves you £75 against booking them separately. It's the one most people take, and I'd take it too.

Your gallery comes back in two to four weeks.