It’s part happiness and part morbid exercise for me to write in my daughter’s baby book. My father died when I was 18, long before I could appreciate his knowledge of my early childhood. I can’t help but think of him every time I open the baby book and start to write. In case something happens and I don’t make it to Mia’s adulthood, I want my daughter to know, in detail, what she was like during her early childhood.
My mother kept a baby book. She diligently recorded dates of vaccinations, congratulation cards and birthday presents received. Although I pore over the book and love her for her effort, none of it truly tells me anything about myself. I look for my emerging personality and only find dates of emerging teeth.
I admit that, like my mother, I do write down the first things, such as the first word Mia said and the first step she took. I know that someday when my daughter has children, she may want to know those things. But I also want her to know how she developed as a person.
I recorded the first joke she ever made and things that a three-year-old finds hilarious. What makes her angry and how she handles it. How she will ride a pony for an hour and a half straight while the other children run around, and how she cries when we have to leave. How she will paint for hours at a time, eventually painting her toy ponies, her Barbie dolls, and finally herself. How she draws maps all day long. Perhaps when she’s changing careers at some point and searching for what she loved as a child, I hope that these facts will give her information long lost to most adults.
I have a driving force that compels me to also tell her my experience of motherhood. I described the sheer exhilaration that came over me when I found out I was pregnant, but I also recorded the panic. The mama love that overwhelmed me the first time I saw her is there, as well as how sleep deprivation makes for all kinds of crazy thoughts.
I want Mia to know that mothering is not always easy. That sometimes it’s nearly impossible and downright exhausting. And that other mothers can be a life saver.
I also entered why her father and I are parenting the way we are and the philosophical reasons behind the choices we make. I think it will go a long way towards her self-understanding; longer than the usual “we did the best we could.”
One of the oddest things I noted in Mia’s baby book was the type of face powder, the soap and the deodorant I use. After my father died, his smell is something I could never quite recapture. I hope the smells of me will meet some basic need for my daughter someday.
The publishers of baby books today don’t have what I write in mind. You never see sections entitled “My favorite perfume in case I die.” I ignore most of the page titles and just put what I want. I know the chances of me remembering these little details 20 years from now are slim to none. So I hope that everything I write will tell her why she is who she is and just as importantly who her mother was as well.
Top Tip #4
There are all kinds of ways to keep a baby book. Writing in an actual baby book is just one of them. You can video blog, picture blog or even just have a jar on the counter. Write little things you want to remember on scraps of paper and put them in the jar. If you’re going to attempt a baby book, try to pick a book with lots of space and think of it spanning age 0 to 5 rather than just the first year. Try to write at least once a year, on your child’s birthday.