Milk Bath Maternity Session What Inspired This & How We Did It

Our Milk Bath Maternity

We cannot believe we will be welcoming our third baby (a girl), “Justice Joy,” in just a few weeks.  Her due date is 2. 20. 20.  How cool is that?  If you’re a numbers meaning kind of person the numbers 2 & 20 have a lot of meanings behind them.  We loved doing this Milk Bath Maternity Session & wanted to share with you how we were inspired & what we did to do it.

As Virginia Wedding Photographer’s we’ve always tried to plan our pregnancies during our “off-season” or slower months.  This time around we got pregnant a little sooner than expected, but really its the most perfect time.  February is usually the slowest month for wedding photographers & its no different for us.

The cool thing about being a husband & wife photography team we have the advantage of in house photographer access pretty much any time we want.  And recently I was on instagram & stumbled across a good photographer friends page.  She posted a milk bath maternity photo she’d recently done.  It was absolutely beautiful & reminded me how much I’ve always wanted to have this done myself.  Since this is our last baby, I loved the idea even more & started looking through Pinterest to get all the ideas on how to do a milk bath session & a vision on what I wanted.  Thank God for Pinterest, y’all; its like the best.

Truthfully,  I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a gorgeous lace dress, although they are absolutely breathtaking. One of our 2020 goals is rocking that frugal living life & this would have totally cut into our January budget & been so unplanned for.  So, I thought really hard of anything I already had on hand.  For milk bath maternity photos its good to use thin materials.  They photograph the best in the bath.  I remembered I bought some tulle to make Juliet & I some tulle skirts, but never got around to it.  It was a pinkish color, which really goes well with my skin tones.

It’s best to photograph these sessions in a big bath with a huge window right next to it.  Because lighting is key to make any photo excellent, ya’ll.  Get the light right & you’ve done 80% of the hard work already.  Thankfully, our master bathroom has this exact setup.  Woot woot for the win.   And woot woot woot for the best light eva!

After I determined the best bath in my house, I set out to our local Kroger’s & hit up their clearance flower section.  Remember I am doing all things to live frugal, so clearance sections are now my very best friend.  I grabbed some flowers & greenery that I thought would go well with the pink tulle I found & headed to the milk section.  I grabbed 3 gallons of whole milk because our bath is a little larger than the average size baths.  Its important to use whole milk for this because whole milk is thicker & denser, which gives that white look.  If you want more of a translucent look just use less milk.

When I got home I just filled the bath up with hot water because I know the milk would cool it down to perfect temperatures.  After I got the water to the height I wanted it to be I added the milk.  For the flowers, its so important to put these in after you get into the bath because they have trouble floating for too long.  Once I was in the bath, I placed the flowers all round me exactly where I wanted them.  Then my sweet husband, Jake, came in to take the photos.  He climbed on top of the bath, beside the bath & really maximized every angle.

Below are just a few of the photos he took.  I am so happy with how these turned out & so glad I decided to do them.  It was such an easy session to do & I actually want to start offering these for other pregnant women.  SO, if you know anyone that is expecting & might love these types of photos, please send them our way.  I’d so love to do something so beautiful like this for them.  Pregnancy is such a hard, but rewarding time & these milk bath maternity photos really reminded me how beautiful pregnancy is.  I love how they turned out so soft & sweet, just the way I am hoping Justice will be.

I so hope you love these photos as much as I do!

We can’t wait to meet you “Justice Joy!”  Just a few more weeks now!

Below are a couple more of my favorites from the session!