Nobody warns you about the photo gap between kid one and kid two.

With my first, I have hundreds of pregnancy photos. Basically one for every single week, bump growing right on schedule, matching outfit and everything. With my second? Most days I couldn't even manage a bump picture in the bathroom mirror, because I was also keeping a toddler alive.

Sound familiar?

If you're pregnant again (or you just brought baby number two or three home) and newborn photos haven't even crossed your mind because you are stretched so thin, I want to stop you right here. This is your reminder, and honestly, your permission slip: this baby, this exact season, only happens once. It deserves to be remembered just as much as the first one did. Even if you're too tired to hold your phone up half the time.

The quiet guilt nobody talks about

I think about this constantly with clients who are pregnant again. There's a quiet guilt that creeps in, usually somewhere around week 30, when they realize they haven't documented this pregnancy the way they documented the first one. Does it even matter? Does anyone even want to see more baby photos when we already have a kid?

Here's what almost 15 years of photographing families has taught me: it's not that you love this baby less. It's that you have less time, fewer free hands, and zero spare energy for holding a phone up in a bathroom mirror. That's not a character flaw. That's just math.

But the math doesn't make this season less worth remembering. If anything, this is the season you'll want proof of the most, because you were living it in fast forward, and the details are the first thing to blur.

Why the second baby's newborn photos matter even more

With your first baby, you had the luxury of slow mornings and a nursery you painstakingly designed and about a thousand photos of tiny toes. With your second, you're doing something genuinely harder: falling in love with a whole new person while still fully showing up for the one who came first. That's not a smaller story. It's a bigger one.

A newborn session with your second (or third!) baby isn't just about capturing the baby. It's about capturing this specific chapter of your family. The big sibling (who now somehow looks GIANT) interacting with the tiny baby. The way your toddler insists on "helping." The particular chaos and tenderness of your house right now, at this size, in this season. You will never get this exact configuration of your family back, and that is worth documenting on purpose.

"But I don't have the energy to plan a session"

This is the part I want you to actually hear: you don't have to plan anything.

An in-home newborn session in Seattle means I come to you. Your house doesn't need to be styled or spotless. Your toddler doesn't need to cooperate on command (in fact, I'd rather they didn't, some of my favorite images are the unscripted sibling moments nobody could have planned). You don't need a nursery worthy of a magazine spread or a color-coordinated outfit for everyone. You need to exist, in your own home, with your baby, for about an hour.

I'll do the rest. I'll get down on the floor with you. I'll work around naps and feeds and toddler meltdowns, because that's not a disruption to the session, that's part of the session. This is real life with two (or three+) kids, and real life is exactly what deserves to be remembered.

Let someone else hold the camera this time

With your first, you probably were the one behind the camera almost as often as you were in front of it. This time, let someone else hold it.

You don't need hundreds of bump photos or a fully documented nine months to make this pregnancy count. You need an hour, once, to actually be present in the pictures instead of taking them.

If you're expecting again, or you're a few weeks into life with your newest baby and still haven't booked anything, this is me telling you: it's not too late, and it absolutely still matters. Let's make sure this season gets remembered too, not just the one before it.

Ready to book your second (or third!) baby's newborn session? Check here and let's find a time that works around nap schedules, toddler chaos, and everything else your beautifully full house has going on right now.