In the ’90s, it was Anne Geddes’s game: photographing naked newborns artfully curled up in pea pods or nestled in hollowed-out watermelons. A pioneer of pre-Internet Cute Overload, Geddes sold an estimated 19 million books worldwide, and, clearly, planted a seed. In the nearly two decades since her calendar- and stationery-spawning coffee-table book Down in the Garden debuted, a new era of newborn photo shoots has blossomed.

No longer just for baby models and greeting cards, it’s become commonplace for parents to blanket social media with their wee Sophias and Aidans ensconced in cheesecloth cocoons or tucked into rustic wooden buckets. (The prevailing newborn shoot aesthetic is deeply dreamy and homespun—“Pinterest-y,” if you will.) Photographers recommend the shoots take place when a baby is 5 to 10 days old, when their still-forming bones are most pliable for the posing.

And pose they do: Through the magic of digital editing, babies loll in the clouds, nap on handmade dreamcatchers, peek out from tiny nests lined with knit blankets. The most popular pose in the newborn sphere may be the Froggy, a shot made possible by “composite” editing multiple shots into one, in which a newborn lies on his belly with his elbows propped and his head resting in his hands.