It happens in almost every newborn session I do.
The baby is settled. The light is right. We’ve made some beautiful images of the baby alone — curled and peaceful and impossibly small. And then I say: okay, let’s get Mom in.
And the response is almost always some version of the same thing.
“Oh — I don’t need to be in them. I look terrible.”
“Can we just do the baby for now?”
“I haven’t slept in four days. I’m not ready for photos.”
I hear this in almost every session. From first-time mothers and fourth-time mothers. From women who looked stunning the moment they walked through the door and women who arrived in yesterday’s clothes with unwashed hair and a coffee they’d already reheated twice.
And I always ask anyway. Gently but consistently. Because after 25 years of photographing newborns in Saint Paul, I know something these mothers don’t know yet.
The photos of them with their baby are going to be the ones that matter most.
Not the ones of the baby alone. The ones of them.
Why New Moms Don’t Want to Be Photographed
Let me acknowledge something clearly before I make my case.
The reluctance is real and it makes complete sense.
The postpartum body is not the body most women feel comfortable being photographed in. The changes — swelling, exhaustion, the particular way a face looks after days of minimal sleep — are significant. The gap between how a woman feels on the inside (overwhelmed, tender, completely undone by love) and how she fears she looks on the outside (exhausted, unkempt, not ready) can feel enormous.
Add to that the cultural noise around postpartum bodies — the relentless pressure to “bounce back,” the before-and-after narratives, the images of new mothers who appear to have experienced no physical evidence of childbirth whatsoever — and it’s no wonder so many women want to step out of the frame.
I understand this completely. I’m not dismissing it.
What I am saying is that the reluctance, as understandable as it is, costs mothers something they cannot get back.
And the cost only becomes clear years later — when the baby is a child, or a teenager, or an adult — and the mother looks through the photos from those first days and finds herself almost entirely absent.
What Your Children Need to See
Here is the conversation I have in my head every time a mother tries to step out of the frame.
In twenty years, your child is going to want to see what you looked like when they were brand new.
Not a curated, camera-ready version of you. You. The actual you, in the actual first days of their life. The exhausted, overwhelmed, completely in love version of you that existed in those specific unrepeatable days.
That’s what they’re going to want.
I’ve photographed families for 25 years. I’ve watched children grow up. And I’ve had adult children — people in their twenties and thirties — tell me that the images they treasure most are the ones that show their parents actually present in the early days. Not polished. Not performing. Just there.
The unwashed hair doesn’t register the way you think it will. The tired eyes don’t read as flaws — they read as love. As sacrifice. As the particular proof that someone was completely present for them in the most vulnerable chapter of their lives.
Your children need to see you in these photos. Not so you’ll look beautiful — though you will — but so they’ll know, with visual certainty, that you were there.
What the Camera Actually Sees
Here is something I want every reluctant mother to understand before she steps out of the frame.
The camera and the mirror show different things.
The mirror shows you what you’re scrutinizing. The dark circles. The hair. The postpartum skin. All the things you’re looking for and therefore finding.
The camera — when it’s operated by someone who knows what they’re doing — shows the whole picture. The way you hold your baby. The particular angle of your face when you look down. The expression you make when your newborn wraps a fist around your finger.
I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I know how to use light. I know which angles work. I know how to capture a mother with a newborn in a way that shows exactly what is actually happening in that moment — which is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever had the privilege of photographing.
I have never — not once — had a mother look at her finished photos and say she wished she hadn’t been in them.
Not once. In 25 years.
What I have had — more times than I can count — is mothers who looked at those images weeks or months later and cried. Not because of how they looked. Because of what the images showed them about themselves that they couldn’t see in the moment.
How present they were. How fierce the love was. How real and true and completely themselves they were in those first impossible days.
How I Ask — And Why the Approach Matters
I don’t ambush mothers into being photographed.
I don’t pressure. I don’t push. I don’t minimize the discomfort or tell people they look great when they haven’t asked for reassurance.
What I do is make a clear, honest case and then let the mother decide.
I say something like: I always like to get some images of you with the baby while we’re together. Not because you need to be camera-ready — you don’t. But because these photos, of you and your baby in the first days, are going to mean more than almost anything else in this gallery five years from now. Can we try a few?
Almost always, the answer is yes.
And then I create the environment where it actually works. I don’t put a tired, postpartum mother in a complicated pose and tell her to smile. I find her in a simple, comfortable position — often holding her baby, often seated, often in whatever she arrived in — and I work with what’s actually there.
I use the light. I give simple, gentle direction. I watch for the moments between the directed poses when something real flickers across her face.
Those moments are what I’m after. Not the performance. The truth.
Practical Notes for Moms Who Are Still Hesitant
You Don’t Have to Be Dressed Up
The images of you with your newborn don’t require a specific outfit or a specific level of polish.
Some of the most stunning mother-newborn images I’ve ever made were of women in hospital gowns, in nursing tanks, in the oversized shirts they’d been living in for three days.
Simple, comfortable clothing often produces better images than something elaborate — because comfort reads as ease, and ease is what you want in these photos.
If you want to bring something specific to wear for your photos, my style guide will give you guidance. But please know: what you arrived in is almost certainly fine.
You Don’t Have to Be “On” the Whole Time
I don’t need you performing for the camera for the duration of the session.
I need a few genuine minutes. That’s it.
Most of the images I’ll create of you with your baby happen naturally — you feeding, soothing, simply holding. I’m watching and catching rather than directing a performance.
You don’t have to sustain anything. You just have to be present with your baby, which you’re already doing.
The Photos Are for Future You, Not Current You
Current you is four days postpartum and not in the mood for photos. That’s completely valid.
Future you — the one who looks at these images in five, ten, twenty years — is going to be so glad that current you said yes anyway.
That’s the person I’m asking you to consider when you make this decision. Not the person standing in front of the mirror right now. The one who will look back at this chapter with all the tenderness and perspective that comes with time.
Say yes for her. She deserves to see herself in these photos.
A Final Word
I ask every mother to be in the photos. Not because I think everyone owes the world a photographic record of their postpartum body. But because I’ve seen, over and over again, what it means to a family when the mother is present in the images.
I’ve seen children look at photos of their mothers holding them as newborns and go completely still in a way that tells me those images are doing something important.
I’ve seen mothers in their forties and fifties look at images from their children’s newborn sessions — images where they were reluctant and tired and not sure they wanted to be there — and weep with gratitude that someone made them stay in the frame.
Those moments are why I ask.
Every time.
If you’re expecting and you want a newborn session where you actually show up in the photos — tired, real, and completely in love — that’s exactly how I work. Reach out and let’s talk about what your session could look like.
