Most Mums don’t ask me this question when booking their session, and it does tend to be dads more so, that wonder why does it take so long.
So I thought I would give a breakdown of why a newborn session does take so long.
1- Everything is slowed down
Once your baby is here, and in those first few weeks, your baby will sleep a lot. And just like us they want to have a nice relaxing, peaceful sleep, but at their newborn session we are going to be moving them into various props, different positions, different wraps, every time we do this it can disturb them from falling into a deep sleep, so we want to work and move nice and slowly to keep them in that nice relaxed sleep without disturbing them as much as possible. If we disturb them too much we make find that they will begin to get frustrated and that will prevent us from getting the images that we wanted.
So keeping that slow process to minimise disruptions is key at a newborn session.
2- Babies need to eat
During your babies session they are going to want a feed, often we will do this at the start of a session, but you will also likely find that they will have another feed once we have been shooting as well, depending on what stage they are at with growth spurts we may end up having many little feeds but often throughout the shoot, while other will have a long feed and be happy for most of the shoot.
I never want any parent to rush to feed during a session, I would always prefer baby be happy and fed, and this will show in your images.
Newborn sessions can vary in how long they take, and is one of the reasons I don’t do more than one newborn session in a day, so you don’t have to worry about been rushed to get the images.
3- Babies are not robots
Babies are little people, and like us they may have a bad day, they may not want to play ball straight away, I am never going to push a baby to prefer if they are really not feeling it, as you will result in the baby getting more stressed and frustrated, which will result in you not having the images that you deserve. Some babies won’t play ball straight away while other will let us get straight to work. Each baby is different, and will do things at their own pace.
In order to get the best results from your Newborn session, I would suggest not having any other plans for the day, to allow you to feel relaxed about the session, without the worry of needing to get somewhere else.
If you have any questions or would like to book your newborn session contact me at www.lottielea.com/contact