If you search for newborn photography, the vast majority of images you’ll find will be of babies fast asleep. There’s a reason for that, and actually there are a few.
Newborns don’t do a lot else for the first couple of weeks. If you’re reading this at four in the morning while trying to persuade a fussy baby to go back to sleep, you probably just laughed out loud. Totally get it. It doesn’t feel that way when you’re in the bubble. But when they’re full and comfortable, they pretty much just sleep. They need lots of rest to process the massive transition they’ve just been through. If you’ve ever tried to keep a newborn awake, you’ll know it tends to result in a pretty big meltdown fairly quickly. Sleeping is what they do best, so we let them shine.
The second reason is their eyes. Very new babies haven’t had much practice using them yet. They can only focus a few inches in front of their face, so when they’re awake you tend to get a squinty or cross-eyed look. With patience you can catch some lovely open-eyed shots, but a lot of those images get discarded because of what their eyes are doing. Sleeping cuts that problem out entirely.
The third reason is their limbs. Along with not yet mastering their eyes, newborns have very little control over their arms and legs. Left to their own devices, those little limbs wave around quite a lot. It’s completely normal and important for their development, but in terms of photos it makes it tricky to catch them still without a leg in the air or an arm across their face. When babies are more wakeful, we tend to work with them swaddled for exactly this reason. Sleep has the same effect.
And the final reason, of course, is that they look so completely lovely when they’re asleep. The others are all true as well, but that one is definitely the best.
