Knoxville Milk Bath- Pregnancy self care

written by

Stephanie Blue

updated February 13, 2020

Every woman deserves to feel like a queen when doing a maternity shoot. Your maternity shoot should feel like a luxury pregnancy self care day and you know I’m all about self care.

When planning my maternity shoot, I knew I wanted feel completely consumed by feminine energy and be at my highest peak of beauty but also serenity.

This shoot had to echo everything self-care!

After reading about the queens that once took milk baths for relaxation and to feel connected to Mother Earth, I was so sure I wanted to find a way to recreate what I saw.

Knoxville offers a world of luxury for moms and mommas 2 be, the only task is finding those gems.

I was lucky enough to find a photographer that was able to create the exact experience I needed to feel connected to Mother Earth and truly enjoy a moment of self care, to the fullest.

Doing a maternity shoot outside of the comfort of my own home scared me.

Not only is it freezing outside but shooting in a bath tub that wasn’t my own, during a pandemic sounds so scary- and gross. So I wanted to find a way to have the perfect shoot in the comfort of my own home.

Not a lot of women have done milk bath shoots as their maternity shoot, most photographers when I gave them images to show what I wanted to recreate, slightly shied away.

I knew I wanted a photographer that wouldn’t just help me create my vision but also have a vision for my shoot. It was also important that they saw the shoot as a self-care experience.

I wanted to bring Cleopatra’s Egyptian bath tub to my West Knoxville home and after talking over my vision with Hayley, I sent her a few images of what I was looking for and on the day of the shoot she got to work!

How to create a beautiful milk bath shoot

For a milk bath shoot there are a few essential things you need to have the perfect images.

Originally, I used a lot more synthetic flowers to decorate around the tub but Hayley came in and made an incredible display with using mainly real flowers and was extremely knowledgable on how to balance the flowers to make even the synthetic flowers look real.

I was curious to figure out how we were going to make sure that the flowers floated and we captured multiple positions before the flowers began to sink.

Thankfully, Haley had this completely covered!

How to make your flowers float in your milk bath

After running a warm bath, high enough to cover the jets in the bath. We then added 3 gallons of milk and I got in the tub.

Prior to adding the flowers, Hayley separated roughly 30 flowers and wrapped the stems with clingfilm to ensure they floated.

Our first few images were without the flowers. We made sure I was comfortable in the tub and got a few candid images of just my bump and the milk.

Adding the milk to the hot water felt so good!

Everything about how my skin was feeling screamed pregnancy-self care and allowed my shoot to feel like an at home spa day.

Hayley is known for her very airy edits and that was exactly what I was looking for, especially for this shoot. Her airy edits really brought out the serene energy I wanted each image to have .

When doing a milk bath shoot, find a photographer that prepares for the things you may not think of.

One of the things I didn’t think of was the angles of the shots and how we would get high up shots.

Luckily, Hayley brought a variety of equipment to ensure different angles throughout the shoot.

Getting the perfect shot.

Although I have modeled for multiple shoots. This shoot felt so different and I was so nervous about getting the perfect shot to truly capture the essence of my pregnancy and how I was feeling.

I wasn’t sure how to pose in a bath tub, especially with a my baby bump, but Hayley gave me great direction on making sure I looked beautiful in all of the shots.

Not only that but she made sure I was comfortable in each position she posed me in and that made the shoot flow incredibly well, and allowed me to remain confident of her direction throughout each transitioned posed.

Capturing perfect shots for your milk bath shoot

What really makes a perfect milk bath shoot is a combination of multiple things, one of the most important being the flowers.

When I decided I wanted to do this type of shoot for my maternity images, I looked up flowers that reflected what I was trying to achieve and the energy I wanted around me.

This helped me a lot in deciding what flowers I wanted in my bath as well as around my head.

Staying comfortable throughout your milk bath shoot

I was just under 30 weeks when I did my maternity shoot and changing positions comfortably and quickly was becoming harder and harder. I was in need of extra support throughout my shoot to make sure I was comfortable at all angles. The way I made sure I could do this was I used an old pillow case and propped it under my butt or between my legs, depending on the angle of the shot. This gave me the extra cushion for the slightly more challenging poses.

This was of course Haley’s magical idea, and it definitely came in handy when helping me to remain comfortable and relaxed so she could capture the best image possible.

What saved us a lot of time was many of my positions were preplanned. Hayley worked to already have a list of poses that we could do before I was in the tub.

That saved so much time!

More about the photographer behind my milk bath

Haley brought the magic of a my milk bath to life with her images. Throughout our session, between prepping and capturing images, I was lucky enough to ask Haley a few questions to help give us some more insight into the girl behind the lens.

1. Tell me a little about your business and how long you have been a photographer?

Although I have been a photographer for about 10 years now, I didn’t really pursue it as a career until about 2 years ago. I think there’s this stigma about creative businesses not being ‘real jobs’ but let me tell you… when you love what you do, it shows, and I haven’t looked back! In addition to my own photography business, we have a little studio close to downtown that we rent out to other creatives for their sessions. It’s been so much fun meeting new people and seeing what they create in our space.

2. How long have you been shooting pregnant women and families?

When I first started out, I shot primarily weddings, but have been shooting families for a little over ten years now. With Covid came a huge shift in my business, and I was shooting so many more intimate smaller sessions. I found my true passion was photographing and empowering females. I especially fell in love with maternity and boudoir photography, and now that’s my specialty.

3. For our shoot you were so creative! For your mother and child shoots aswell as your maternity shoots, how do you capture the mother’s vision while adding your own creative flair to each shoot?

With each client session there definitely has to be an element of trust on both sides. As a photographer I know what lighting and angles will work best and what will translate well in camera. At the same time, I try to talk with my client to get a solid idea of their vision and then we can communicate and work through it together to make it happen! I am also all for showing you the back of my camera to show you what works and what doesn’t, but also keeping an open mind and we will try anything once!

4. I can only imagine how hard it is to do the business you do during a pandemic, how have you worked to keep your clients safe when they visit your studio and when you do in house shoots?

Safety is super important to us. We mask up and end each session by wiping down surfaces and equipment and sanitizing common areas before our next guest arrives. We even have multiples of bed sheets and certain props that we turn out and wash between sessions. You’d never know it because they are all identical haha, but we feel it is important for us to be diligent when it comes to the health and safety of others. We’ve also updated our policies when it comes to rescheduling sessions with us to allow for more leniency. We’re all in this together, and we’ll figure out a way to roll with the punches.