I have a confession to make.
I am completely, utterly and abysmally sh*t at keeping a baby journal.
Don’t get me wrong. I started out with the best intentions, truly I did. I purchased a rather cutesy baby record book with spaces for scan photos and little envelopes for the first locks of hair and perfectly dotted lines so I could jot down funny things Hector did or how I felt as a new mum.
It started well; I mean I was able to fill in the relevant information about Ste and I, due and birth dates and all the vital birth statistics. I even photocopied every single page of my green pregnancy notes after my waters broke whilst I was having contractions because I knew once I’d given birth I’d have no record of what it was like to be pregnant with him other than memories of horrific heartburn and being jabbed in the ribs.
And then it just trailed off from there. I’m not sure why this is…Perhaps it was lack of time, laziness even, the desire to catch 40 winks whilst he napped rather than scrawling in a book or maybe it’s because Hector seemed to hit key milestones on already memorable dates, crawling for the first time on Ste’s birthday and walking properly the day before he turned 14 months. That way I already had them logged in my brain and didn’t feel the need to write them down per se.
I realise though that this isn’t exactly helpful for my boy, that there may come a time when he wants to know something that I haven’t stored away mentally. Time of course can be the great deceiver and memories you thought you would never forget dissipate like smoke in the wind. I know I certainly felt that way during Hector’s first year on the planet; I regularly asked my mum questions about when I first slept through, when my first tooth appeared, when I spoke my first word and the answer was the same…’Lolly, I can’t quite remember.’
Understandable but frustrating nonetheless. I’m not sure about why I felt I needed to know…as if this would bring me some kind of insight into when Hector might first begin to ‘do’ things. Patience has never been my strong point. But I digress; this post is all about baby journals and my incompetence at keeping one.
That’s not to say I haven’t tried to keep a journal. After my failure at populating the more traditional number mentioned at the beginning of the post I opted for a classic notebook which I intended to fill in as the mood took me. I promised myself I would write those funny phrases Hector said that day or things he might have done. I wanted it to be a very long letter from me to him so he could glean an insight to what he was like as a child when he was much older. It sits on my beside table ready and waiting for me to write in before bed complete with a rather lovely pen. Have I filled it in once? Have I heck!
Mentally I’ve composed numerous paragraphs to him and about him, but when it comes to putting pen to paper I’m failing miserably and I’m not sure why this is. Nearly all my friends with kids the same age have written copious amounts about their children either in designated books or simply using a notebook they’ve found at home. I’m envious, awestruck even, but I know I have only myself to blame.
I’ve promised myself this year as a kind of mini resolution for 2017 to write once a week in his book. He’s two now and I’ve possibly missed the boat on capturing my earlier memories of him in written form but I feel at least that I need to try – the toddler years have always been my favourite anyway. That way there’ll be some written dialogue for Hector to catch up on in years to come to accompany the thousands of photographs we have of him; I’m thankful I haven’t slacked on the images side of things. Plus there’ll come a day I’m sure when I take a moment to read up on all I’ve written and find myself reliving things I’d completely forgotten; you never think you will but somehow you just do. So much of his first year already is just a smudgy blur.
I promise keep you all updated on how I get on but I wouldn’t mind a gentle nudge from you from time to time to remind me to get my ass into gear and pen onto paper. I’m counting on you…
Do any of you write daily/weekly/monthly in a baby journal? Perhaps you use a different method of capturing all that they say and do? Can you tell me all about it? Are any of you as undisciplined as I am on the baby book agenda? Why do you think that is? I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments section below…
Oh Lolly, you must do it. You have such a beautiful way with words, especially when you speak about Hector; it would be such a treasure to look back on. I say that, but… go back a little, you have a journal sitting right here in the Rock My archives!
It’s my intention (one day) to share all of my old real bride posts and put them away for E to read when she’s old enough. So maybe take a look back at all of your beautiful love stories to Hector that are already here? It’s the perfect starting point.
Speaking of E, it’s so important for us that she has as much information about her early life as we can give her. To add to it, I bought the most gorgeous little book called My Amazing Family & Me by Jesse Toksvig-Stewart – a record book for every family, even those a little less conventional like ours. It’s a lovely way to record special thoughts, personality & life with lots of space to ramble. I love noting down the little things as well as the big things… like you though, finding the time isn’t always easy.
It might be a good book for you to start with though too, a couple of prompts to make it easier to get those words flowing.
Keep us posted! Xx
Oh Karen you’ve made me blush! Thank you for all your lovely words doll! And thank you also for reminding me what I have written so far. I guess what I mean is all those in-between what seems inconsequential moments that I wouldn’t put on RMF but which are full of meaning for me and hopefully for Hector further down the line. But you’re right there’s a plethora of memories that I’ve already written that perhaps I’ll make into a book one day…
I love the sound of the book you’ve bought for your family though…think I’ll pop off to check it out now. Little E is so so lucky to have you xxx
???xxx
Unconventional point but Lolly- you have written a baby journal! And it’s stuffed with amazing pictures! All you have to do is copy paste and print your Insta feed of Hector with all the beautiful mini essays and hey presto! Let alone your contributions here, all full of love and beautifully written. Don’t beat yourself up for not having some ribbon wrapped scrap book.
I wrote a drug fuelled emotional journal of her first days when we were in hospital with her jaundice but I have no idea what happened to it!!!
Oh no! It will probably pop up in years to come when you least expect it and when you most need it. Thank you also for your very kind words…it’s so lovely to hear from someone else you know. Any ideas on if there’s an app that you can download to print both Instagram pictures and their accompanying comments?
YES! Our ones I printed three years ago recently got soaked in water and I’m gutted.
The company is called Origrami and they print the caption on the back of the picture. They come in a really nice box too.
AMAZING Sioned! Getting on that bad boy right now!
I would love to know this as I have created an Insta account (no followers and not following anyone) just to document my baby daughter’s life so far (2months!) it’s a quick and easy way to record memorable moments and milestones. Would love to be able to print someday! x
Just seen Sioned’s reply – great!!
I kept a scrapbook of scan photos as part of my sad camp anxiety in pregnancy class. It’s so Ophelia understands how wanted she is and not a replacement for Alexandra. Now she’s here it’s getting difficult to keep up. I think I’ll try to keep going up until her first birthday and then it can be a gift for a later birthday.
Love this idea Claire! Ophelia is very lucky to have you as her mum xxx
When I was pregnant, my friend bought me a brilliant book. A five year diary for mums with just a line or two for each day. There is also a question it asks you to respond to . You can then see the answers over the last few years. So manegable and gets you thinking! I then also scrawl round the edges any important milestones/ feelings I have. Such a brilliant present and one I will buy for my future mum friends!
It’s called Q&A for mothers. 365 questions, five years, 1825 answers.
Thanks for the recommendation Bex…I’m thinking this could be a wonderful mum present for my expecting friends too…I’m pinching this idea from you xxx
I have a similar journal that my husband and I both fill in. It’s a sentence a day for 5 years from the ‘Happiness Project’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Happiness-Project-One-Sentence-Journal-Mothers-x/dp/0385348657/
I know its not quite a diary but I got my nephew an email address just after he was born and we all email pictures, videos and little notes to him as and when we think of it through the year, we all find it much easier to just forward a little video or photo to the address as we think of it and it keeps it all in chronological order so if we ever did want to transfer it into a book or something its easy to do – just an idea for an alternative?
That’s an excellent idea Claire! Keeps all the family memories in one place…I would just worry in case the email address got deleted or something but then I suppose a journal could get lost too…
His mum logs in periodically to check its all backed up to the cloud and to pull the photos and videos into groups to download / print etc but it seems to work pretty well to keep you recording things regularly.
I bought a baby book too with the best intentions of recording special memories however it is dotted with post it notes instead waiting for someone with lovely handwriting to write in instead lol I love the idea of using a notebook instead
Philippa my handwriting is atrocious; it was bad at school and even worse now that most of my writing is completed on a laptop. I read somewhere that bad handwriting is a sign of intelligence but I don’t think I can get away with that any more!!
I had a grand plan of creating a beautiful, handwritten journal for my daughter. In reality, I’ve got intermittent often 3/4 finished notes in my phone (which I really hope I haven’t lost forever after drowning one phone, but can’t quite bring myself to go back and check). I do though take a huge number of photographs, including a photo a (nearly every) day over the last couple of years, so I’m hoping that will be a suitable substitute some way down the line, as long as I actually get round to putting them in books at some point!
That’s the problem with technology isn’t it Jen! After hearing too many bad luck stories with my friends and lost photos I made sure I downloaded all my images onto dropbox and then printed as many off as possible too. We have so many pictures, some of which I’ve popped into some phonebooks too but I feel it’s the written word that I’m lacking. Really hoping that your phone hasn’t deleted all your notes….perhaps a phone specialist could help?
I know what you mean – I’ve got a beautiful baby journal but didn’t fill much in once my little one was born (too busy feeding / trying to catch up on sleep!) and now it feels like I’ve left it too long! (He’s 1 now!) I’ve recently started a bullet journal and it’s the first type of journal I’ve perservered with for more than a month or two – this explains it well I think: https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/how-to-start-a-bullet-journal?utm_term=.xandjmyP3#.qlONlxKVd. I try and note down things we’ve done or new milestones whenever I can – not a gift for little ones when they’re older but something you can refer back to at least! Xx
Woah Amanda this looks amazing and complicated and something I really need to look into further…I’d not heard about it until your comment so thanks for sharing. I like the speed aspect of it immediately!
I finally got round to doing the photo books I promised I’d do for my two girls each birthday – 6 and half years later! So I don’t hold much hope for notebook journals but I think it’s such a lovely thing to do. In 2016 I did a great project called 1 second everyday where I filmed a second (or more) of my children’s life using a great app called 1SE. It’s so easy to use and we have a lovely video of 366 seconds of our lives in 2016. Can massively recommend
A video friend of ours also did this a couple of years ago Ruth to document the life of he and his wife and it was so lovely to watch. I think I might start this with Heccy for this year…is it too late to begin?
No defo start it now! Download the app and have it look. It’s so easy to do and I love looking back on it. Takes a while to get into the mindset of remembered to video each day but since it’s only a second it sometimes doesn’t matter what you record. I quite enjoyed catching the really ordinary moments
I too am utterly rubbish at the record keeping aspect of motherhood. I haven’t even managed to fill in the red book properly! However, I have opened an email account to which I send updates and photos. Zoe is approaching two and there are only about 8 emails in there so far, but it’s better than nothing. I plan to give her the details on her 18th birthday so she can login and read it. The only thing is, you have to remember to login every couple of months or the account gets cleared out (found this out to my detriment and had to trawl through all my sent items to resend them – thankfully I’m equally bad at clearing out my sent items as I am at record keeping).
My baby boy is nearly six weeks old and I have been using a combination of a five year journal, the Emily Ley baby book, a family photo stream and Instagram to record this precious time. If he’s anything like his Mama I
know he’ll love looking at it. Now I just have to keep it up!
Good luck Zoe! I will be in awe of you if you manage to update all of these amazing journal variations. What a lucky boy your son is xx
I love a journal of any kind. I saw a post somewhere about how someone asked family members to write letters to their child on the early birthdays and they were then presented to the child on their 18th birthday. Perhaps if a regular journal is tricky an annual letter to Hector summing up highlights and milestones and enclosing a few photos would be lovely.
Claire I absolutely adore this idea and I know my sisters and my parents will embrace it with open arms too! I’m going to have to get them on board asap!
I had grand plans to document Isabella’s first few years but failed miserably the first 6 months, after that I just used an annual diary to write a few notes and in my iCalendar for a while. However, since then I found an amazing App called Day One, which is like an online journal, you can have more than one so you could have one for each child if you have more but I have just one single one that I use to write little memories and milestones, you can also add up to 10 photos per entry and export it as a pdf. I am using it to remind myself of things when I FINALLY get round to doing my annual family books so I can put little snippets in them too. It’s great to have as sometimes you might not have a pen or paper and most of the time you have your phone, so I just jot a little note in it. You can also get the desktop version which syncs with your phone if you want to write more detailed entries rather than doing them on your phone which I find a bit more cumbersome as I type faster on the computer.
Isabella is now 5!! And I have a little boy who is nearly 2 so I’ve been so much better at recording things with it.
A friend also bought me this book which, again when I finally get round to doing it, will be given to her on her 18th birthday as a keepsake of her childhood years, I think I’ll buy one for J as well. Just have to give myself that nudge up the backside to get round to doing them as I have to backdate the last 5 years haha!!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Daughter-Capturing-stories-memories-Journal/dp/1907048421
Good luck with your journal keeping!! x
I am also utterly cr*p at writing things down. I also had the best of intentions, but nothing has materialised. What we did do though was open an email account for our daughter, and every now and again, when I remember, I email a few photos as a record, or forward really important things like her first swimming certificate. Silly things. I guess when she is 18 I will give her the password and she can see what is in there. Or I will be embarrassed that I wrote a grand total of 10 emails in her entire life and delete all things hurriedly before handing over the email account. I’m very envious of anyone that can keep up these journals though!
Ooh I periodically feel guilty about this too! When I was pregnant with my first someone bought me a baby record book that goes up to 2 years and covers things like their first holiday / Christmas etc, I’ve semi filled it in but always think I must finish it… now I’ve had baby number 2 I’ve bought him a similar book in order to be fair but haven’t filled much in yet ? I always think the same as you that it’s the little every day things though that id like a record of, like funny things they say. I think the email address is a great idea! One thing I have done and plan to keep up is buy them a lovely card every Christmas and birthday and write a nice message in telling them how much we love them and how special they are etc, then I put them away in a box for them to have when they’re older! It’s only a little thing but hopefully they’ll be nice to look at in years to come! I take loads of photos too and I’ve vowed to make a photo book every year however so far I need to catch up on 2015 and 2016…. really should get on with that… x
I had a sentence a day diary thing through the happiness project but it stopped when I went back to work because really, what is there to say about ‘I picked you up from nursery and put you to bed’ that doesn’t make your heart actually hurt. When we go out and do things as a family I write them on the kitchen calendar so I know where we’ve been.
I use my IG feed as a semi diary and i’m also religious about taking my big camera out (its smashed to smithereens but I have thousands of photos so whatever). I’ve made photo books on blurb (in the last week – it’s taken two years so am not holier than thou. Yes the photos are blurry and yes they’re a bit crap but they’re visible memories and they’re the best I have.
Now waiting for a 40% code on Blurb for my 250 page books (plural…..). It’ll cost a FORTUNE but at least they’re done.
One thing I have noticed whilst ploughing through the photos is how infrequently I appear. Resolutions this year are
(1) to have some proper photos taken by a professional again; and
(2) to get my husband to take more than just crap blurry selfies and force myself not to delete them because I think I look fat.
My son is 20 months but way back in 2012, when my husband finally agreed that we could start a family, I set up an email addresses for my baby to be.
I’ve kept up with it too! Albeit they are less frequent now as I’m very aware that he probably won’t want to, or even have time to read hundreds of emails from me!
I’m now down to 1 very long email with 10 photos every 3 months, but that’s not to say I don’t send him the odd photo or link to a YouTube video I think is cool. I’ve even signed him up for things using his email. We’ll be doing our second Birdwatch at the end of the month.
He also has a record book, and all great intentions were there but it didn’t feel natural and there were too many pages that weren’t relevant or the thing I wanted to write about didn’t have a page.
I plan to give him his email when he’s a teenager, when it feels right.