The first few months of your baby’s life are a blur. You’re running on five hours of interrupted sleep and you are trying to take care of a brand new little person who has a lot of needs that they can’t express. With my first two boys I kept a scrapbook to document all of the things I wanted to remember during their first years. During my last pregnancy, I heard about a different kind of book–a lifebook.
A lifebook goes a step beyond scrapbooking. With a scrapbook you document all of the big occasions–first tooth, first word, first haircut, etc. A lifebook documents all of the small moments that you don’t really notice at the time. Essentially a lifebook is a journal about your baby, to your baby. You can write entries daily, weekly or even monthly about your experiences that you have had during that period. This can include little tidbits like the song he couldn’t get enough of or how he giggled when you washed his feet at bath time. You can also include photos or even do photo documentation of things you want to jot down during the day. If you are more inclined to do things in cyberspace, you can use lil grams–a website that helps you create virtual babybooks.
Traditionally, lifebooks were created for adopted and foster children to remind them of where they have been in their lives. But more and more biological parents are adopting this trend for similar reasons. As children get older, often a communication gap develops between them and their parents because they don’t understand each other. When a teenager reads through their lifebook they can see how their mom(or dad) grew as a parent and perhaps get a better perspective of them. If nothing else, it will remind them how much you love them. And when they are much older and having children of their own, they can read your baby experiences as they are going through the same thing.
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