(featuring the Lawrence & Muller families, respectively)

There’s a moment in the first couple weeks with a newborn where you realize two things in one fell swoop:

1. You are somehow sitting down 87% of the time and still exhausted beyond comprehension.
2. Every single thing you need has migrated within a three-foot radius of wherever you’ve been consistently nap-trapped.

The burp cloth is there. The swaddle is there. The glass of water you keep forgetting to drink is there.

And if you’re being honest, the idea of gathering all of that up—your own world-worn body included—and leaving the house for a newborn session feels a little… ambitious. Dare I say, even unnecessary.

This liminal window where time is a totally made up concept is where newborn photography at home actually makes the most sense in the world. Not because it’s easier (even though it absolutely is) and certainly not because it’s trendy— but because it mirrors the way your life is actually functioning in real-time right now.

Which is: seated, slightly disoriented, and in the thick of it. 

And as a Vermont newborn photographer, that’s exactly the version of this season I’m interested in documenting. 

Here are six reasons why home is my favorite place to photograph you and your newborn:

1. You don’t have to turn birthing a child into an outing.

But what if you skipped the whole sitting-in-the-backseat-with-baby part and just… stayed?

No scrambling to find an outfit when we both know sweats are what you need most right now. No trying to mom-math how many diapers and onesies you need to pack (if last night’s blowout is any indication of how this particular excursion is going to go). No loading a car seat while a newborn is actively disagreeing with the entire concept.

If you’re feeding the baby when I walk in, great. That’s where we start. If your oldest two are occupied mainlining some M&Ms (as they should be), we work around that. If the whole thing happens with you on the couch, practically melting into the pillows? Perfect.

That’s the session.

Nothing about you birthing a whole human needs to be turned into something other than what it is to be worth documenting.

2. Your house doesn’t need a crash course in hosting a newborn photography at home session.

No offense to studios. They have their place.

But I’ve got to hand it to your house— it is currently operating at expert hostess-with-the-mostest level.

It knows full well which window gets the good light at precisely 10:03am, which chair you gravitate towards when your feet feel especially heavy, and which spot on the couch is now slightly… well-loved, to say the least.

As if it doesn’t do what it does best already, your house then also accommodates a whole new human (and the dramatic lifestyle shift that comes with it) without flinching. 

There’s a bassinet positioned exactly six inches from your side of the bed. A blanket that has, without discussion, become the blanket. An unspoken rhythm cosplaying as routine that didn’t exist two weeks ago and now somehow runs the entire day.

That’s pretty cool, if you ask me. 

And also if you ask me— your handy dandy Vermont maternity and newborn photographer— I’d trust your house over the studio setup any day of the week. 

3. Older siblings are allowed to be wildly inconsistent.

Which, to be clear, is their brand. They will stake their entire reputation on it, in fact.

You can count on them:

• being deeply interested in the baby for approximately 90 seconds
• requesting an ice cream sundae with sour gummy worms immediately after
• demanding your attention via an impressively creative method they’ve never tried before
• and then, out of nowhere, climb up next to you and gently press their face into the baby like they’ve been waiting all day to do exactly that

With newborn photography at home, we don’t try to dilute that or iron it out. We— brace yourselves— let it happen.

I know you want your (now older) kiddo to ‘behave real nice for the photographer,’ but I promise you: it is the furthest thing from necessary. In fact, that wildly inconsistent energy is highly encouraged around these parts.

Forget “be a good big brother/sister, and smile nicely.” Just let new big sibling figure it out in real time, a little unsure and obsessed at the same time.

4. Dad gets to be a person, not a participant.

There is a very specific energy shift when dads don’t have to perform for a camera.

No one is telling him where to stand. No one is adjusting his arms like he’s part of a mannequin display. He’s just… in his house. 

Leaning in the doorway. Sitting down because he finally has a second. Holding the baby in that slightly tentative, really proud way that makes you fall in love with him again. Pouring himself a whiskey on the rocks at some point because, yeah, fair. And yeah, vibes.

It reads differently when you replace “dad in a photo, smiling against his will” with just… dad.

5. You’re documenting your child in the place where they’re going to spend their whole life growing up.

(Bet you didn’t think I’d lay this heavy hitter on you, did you?)

I know that, right now, your house feels like nothing more than survival mode headquarters.

But this is the place where memory lives— where your baby is going to take their first steps while clutching onto their older sisters’ hands, where they’re going to run down that hallway at full speed when they hear dad come home from work because they know he’ll fly them around like an airplane, where they’ll sit at the kitchen counter asking you why the sky is blue while you make absolutely sure their strawberries aren’t touching the mac and cheese.

They might not know the rooms yet— or that they’re helping you fill them, one heartbeat at a time. They don’t know that this place will become the place.

But they will. One day. And you’re going to want the evidence of them before they knew, along with the still frames of their favorite people (that’s you) figuring it out as they go.

6. The clutter of your newborn photography at home end up telling most of the story.

The dog walking through the frame like they own the place (they do). The boots by the door that no one bothered to move. The random object on the counter that’s been there for three days and is now just… part of the landscape.

You’re not setting a scene. You’re letting the scenes you already live keep on existing (and get documented for posterity by a Vermont newborn photographer who lives for that stuff).

I know it hasn’t hit you yet, but later, those are the things that will make you pause when you’re flipping through your heirloom family album.  Not necessarily because they were important on their own, but because they were there when everything else was happening.

The clutter and mess are the trail markers of a life well-lived, the breadcrumbs your life leaves behind when you’re too busy living it to tidy up.

As it should be.

7. The life you’re actively building won’t get edited out.

Some families are building something bigger than what fits in a single frame. A different kind of life. A different pace. A different set of priorities.

I recently photographed newborn photography at home for a family who had just sold everything they owned and moved onto a piece of land— chickens wandering around like they owned the place, wind doing whatever it wanted with the grass, a dog that clearly had no interest in cooperating with anything resembling a “session.”

Nothing about it looked like a setup of some cookie cutter newborn photo ideas. It looked like someone had welcomed a baby into the middle of a life that was already happening.

Mom was breastfeeding in a wooden chair pulled up to the window— not because it was aesthetic, but because that’s where the light is good at that hour and, more importantly, where she’s been sitting all week. Dad stepped in and out, half finishing something outside, half keeping track of what was going on in here. The baby got passed between them in that slightly uncoordinated, very real way that happens when you’re still learning each other.

At one point I pulled out the Super 8, and nothing changed. No one reset. No one “got ready.” The wind kept moving. The chickens kept making noise. The dog walked through the frame like he had a standing appointment.

Sound like a dream come true for your newborn photography at home to feel that… easeful? It is.

(And I have the pictures to prove it.)

If you’re thinking about newborn photography at home:

When you photograph your newborn at home, you don’t have to carve out a separate version of your life to make the photos work. You just… include them in it.

And years from now—when that same baby is catching fireflies in the backyard, or slamming the screen door open with far more strength than you thought they had in their itty bitty biceps—you’re not just going to see them in these photos.

You’re going to see the very beginning of it all… and every moment that came after.

Somewhere between flipping the page of the photo album and trying to keep that lone tear from escaping your eye, it’ll catch you off guard: how much of it stayed, how much of it mattered, and how none of it needed to be anything other than what it already was. 

Curious how to prepare for your newborn photography at home now that you’re sold on the idea? Check out this post.