What is my newborn session flow?

First what is a newborn session flow? It’s the order you do the poses in your session. There are 2 really general ways to do it-parents at the beginning or parents at the end, and everything else can vary widely from photographer to photographer.

Parents at the beginning:

I prefer to do parent photos are the beginning for a few reasons. First as we all know a newborn session is hot! I don’t want my parents to worry about the fact that they just sat through 2 hours sweating and now they have to do photos. I want them fresh! The second biggest thing is siblings. I want the sibling to be fresh and not bored. Even a little stunned in a new location can be helpful. And if parents want once the family portion is all done the older sibling can leave. I always give this as an option. Sometimes dad can take them home, sometimes a grandparent can come pick them up. Sometimes a parent will just take them away from the studio and go to the park and go get lunch. But not matter what I don’t force parents to do anything. Sometimes it’s easier for them all to just stay. Mom and Dad can have some one-on-one attention with sibling while I do newborn photos, or they can just all relax. I don’t want the parents to have to worry about the sibling leaving if that makes things more stressful.    

Wrapped:

Since I do family at the beginning most of the time I start with baby wrapped. No matter what babies seem to always come into my studio awake. So wrapping them calms them down, plus it makes it easier for a sibling to interact and hold them. I keep baby wrapped for while to get a lot of variety because one that wrap comes off baby will have a mind of their own. I do wrapped on a flokati, then wrapped in a prop or even 2. Under the wraps I always use a swaddle pro (the silent one). 

Bucket:

Next I move on to a bucket or basket pose. I love the Hello Little Everlasting Bucket and their bucket huggers. You can get even more variety by just switching them out. I’ll let you in on a little secret…I do the bucket after the wrapped poses because I keep the bottom half of the baby still wrapped. You can’t see it and it keeps them settled.

After the bucket I move to naked poses on a blanket, some call these beanbag poses, from when everyone used to use a beanbag, but I use a custom table my husband built me. Sometimes I can move right into these, but most of the time babies what to eat again, and that’s ok!

Naked poses:

I do these at the end and just a couple if baby cooperates. I’ll also do awake photos if after eating baby is super alert.

Variation:

Some sessions I’ll mix it up a little bit depending on if I get any parent request or how the baby is doing, but most sessions are very similar to this. I love having a game plan. It helps me set everything up ahead of time, and I know exactly what’s next.