Gabriel was pretty alert and awake for our entire session, and I didn’t mind it one bit!

When I first started my business several years ago, newborn AWAKE babies made me nervous.  Ha!  I had this idea from seeing pictures all over Pinterest of perfectly, curled up, naked, sleeping babies that that is what I needed to do.  So I would sometimes spend HOURS during a session shushing, dripping in sweat (because the room had to be WARM), waiting and then waiting some more for those sweet babies to fall asleep.  Sometimes it worked beautifully, and sometimes…it just didn’t.  Babies didn’t want to stay asleep or be in an awkward curled up position….or be completely naked for long periods of time!   I could see the stress on my clients’ faces back then because everyone thought we needed that one perfect shot so they could send out their birth announcements with those “Pinterest worthy” pictures.

It took me a couple of years to realize those weren’t the pictures I was drawn to anyways.  The ones that gave me all the feels were the ones where that sweet baby was curled up in his mama’s arms, or that little week old little girl grabbed at daddy’s finger and wouldn’t let go.  I loved the pictures that captured that moment of a big brother smothering his little brother with kisses, not because we told him too, but because he literally could not keep his hands off of him!   I love the yawns, the piercing eyes, and even the cries.  I love when we lay them down and they reach their hands up by their face and mom says, “I swear that’s what she was doing in all of my ultrasounds”.