A Recent Newborn Session with a Beautiful Baby Girl

Recently I had the pleasure of photographing this beautiful baby girl.  Her family travelled from Toronto to Bowmanville to see me. She spent some time being awake during her newborn session so I took the opportunity to capture her with her eyes wide open.  Of course, she gave us lots of time for sleeping pictures too.

During my newborn photography sessions, I try to capture as many sleeping poses as possible.  I’m still in love with classic pictures of newborn babies photographed just as they are.  I do one wrapped set up each newborn session and the remaining setups are of baby unwrapped.  This makes my sessions a little bit longer but well worth the patience and effort to create beautiful keepsake images of your new baby.

This upcoming October will be my 10th year working full-time as a newborn photographer.  I use professional studio lighting because I find the images to be much sharper than natural lighting.  In the past few years, I have worked to master macro work with the newborns to capture extreme close-up imagery which details their tiny features in a way I could never capture with natural lighting techniques.

When you come to see me for newborn pictures, we take our time so baby is kept comfortable.  As a mom to a 10 year old and 8 month old (both girls), I know that each mom has different parenting styles and I’m here to help you support your needs and your baby’s needs during a photography session.

I nursed both of my daughters.  This is something that was so very important to me.  It doesn’t matter how baby is fed; however, what is important, is what YOU choose for your baby.  Many of my clients are nursing their infants during their newborn sessions.  My first experience nursing my daughter 10 years was super easy.  She naturally latched and instinctively knew what to do with little help from me.  My experience with my second daughter; however, was not so easy.

Our first three weeks together were spent visiting lactation consultants, a home visit with a public health nurse for lactation support and several visits with public health nurses at the Durham Region Health Coalition.  Ultimately, we received a referral to the Dr. Jack Newman clinic in Toronto from the hospital where we gave birth.

If it wasn’t for making the extreme effort to attend almost daily appointments with a newborn, we would not have been able to breastfeed successfully.  I was often in tears as I had such a wonderful experience with my first daughter, I wanted the same nursing experience with my second.  I’m often too hard on myself and refuse to give up on things.  She was unable to latch.  I had to be taught to assist her and it wasn’t easy to hold her the way I was instructed.  I was torn, cracked and bleeding and in constant pain.  She wasn’t gaining weight hence the reason for daily appointments to take things one day at a time and decide whether we needed to switch to formula.  She wasn’t losing weight but she also wasn’t gaining.

It took my daughter until 3 weeks to gain back her birth weight.  She reached this milestone the day I had decided to go buy her formula.  On this day I went to a local mommy’s group.  It was time for introductions and I said my name and I started to cry because I felt like a failure.  All the mommys there were so supportive.  They were all breastfeeding their babies.  The two public health nurses took the time to give me another private session for breastfeeding help.  They asked me lots of questions about my daughter and how she was doing.  They determined she was thriving.  She had gained one ounce and they recommended I give it another few days to breastfeed.  I’m so glad I did because my daughter is now almost 9 months and we’re still nursing.

It is a personal choice for all mothers to decide what they want to do for their babies.

One of the things that has always been so important to me in the last 10 years of my newborn photography, is giving moms the time they need to nurse their infants during sessions.  It makes my sessions longer for this reason and I’m okay with that.  I’ve never used pacifiers as a soothing technique during newborn sessions.  I feel it’s very important in those first few days of life for mom and baby to spend lots of time together nursing if mom has chosen to nurse her baby.