15 Important Ways to Journal Baby’s First Year

We believe it is important to track your little one’s milestones and your thoughts and inspirations to create valuable bonding as a new family. So we’ve got 15 ways to journal Baby’s First Year.

Life changes forever when your first precious baby is born.

It’s a dramatic change, and together with all the hormonal hurricanes going on, it’s good to take a little thought about how you’ll manage it all.

You can’t really have a daily schedule with a newborn. You may begin noticing a bit of routine by the time baby reaches 4 months, but flexibility is the best sort of schedule to keep until they’re at least 6 months.

However, keeping a baby journal, and along with that, a calendar to track your baby’s firsts, is a good thing. The act of journaling – writing down your thoughts and feelings, keeping track of how the days go – can give you a sense of wellbeing. It can help you feel centered as you adjust to your new life as a family. Solstice Stories says, “Recording your baby memories in a journal is a great way to bond with your baby and can boost your mental health by allowing you to process and reflect thoughts and feelings of the birth experience and parenthood.”

Dreamcatcher Baby’s First Year Keepsake Calendar via kimenink.com

15 Baby Journal Ideas

We’ve got a list of ways to document your baby’s life. Besides the multitudes of photos many parents value. Photos are not part of our life, so we have other ways to track memories.

Although I have to confess that my children’s dedicated Baby Books never got filled, the boxes the books came in are loaded with snippets of this and notes about that. So that’s why we have special heavy duty envelope/boxes as part of our Baby’s First Year Keepsake Calendars. We know there’s more parents out there like us, who want to keep stuff, but don’t have time to sit down and actually organize them onto pages.

Ways t0 journal your baby’s life:

1. Pregnancy Announcement. Start at the beginning: make pages with the stories of the pregnancy. Ultrasound photos, when you heard/felt that first tiny flutter of a heartbeat, gagging on watermelon and the smell of brewed tea, etc.
2. Baby Shower Memories. Keep copies of the invitation, paperware or decorations, games, etc. What did you wear? A list of gifts and the givers. Anything funny that happened.
3. Gender Reveal Announcement. This has become a chance for parents to make great memories. Although some prefer to keep the gender to themselves, or not even find out until baby is born.
4. The Birth Story. When did the contractions start? How long did they last? When did you go to the hospital? All the details will become part of your child’s life story (when/if you choose to share it).
5. Coming Home the first time. What I remember best about bringing our first baby home was fumbling with the car seat. We had the breathing during childbirth down pat, but not the car seat practice. Hilarious.
6. Letter to Your Baby. This could simply be a ramble about your life before, and sort of a diary of the first days of baby’s life. Then include some dreams for the future as a family, and for the baby specifically. Make it sort of like a Biblical blessing.
7. Baby’s Hand and Foot Prints. We post about how to stamp baby’s hand and footprints here, but there are many cute ideas for recording these. If baby is born at Christmas time, you can use a Christmas design.
8. Parenting Insights. Write down the scriptures and quotes that keep you going and inspire you to be the best parent ever. You will have thoughts some days that will make you feel amazing when you read them later. (Light bulb moments, when you think, “You mean, I thought of that?”)  Remember, you are amazing! You are a parent of a new human. You are the main influence in a new life!

Don’t forget the Trackers for that First Year:

9. Feeding Tracker. This will help develop a schedule as baby grows.
10. Growth Tracker. Keep tabs on weight and height as the months pass. With Kim, I didn’t want to do this, because she stayed so tiny. And even though she was strong and healthy, I felt like a failure because she didn’t grow. Her doctor would put me on a guilt trip, never suspecting there could be other reasons. Such as autism, as it turned out. I should make sure pediatricians these days consider all aspects with failure to thrive babies. Sorry. My soapbox.
11. Firsts Tracker. First smile; first roll-over. So many firsts. Our stickers for the keepsake calendars have more than a hundred firsts to track!
12. Baby’s Months Tracker. Celebrate each month’s birthday that first year. And write about it.
13. Baby’s First Birthday. The big one. This could take pages!
14. Baby’s First Christmas. And other first holidays.
15. Baby’s Scribbles. When did she grab that pen from you? Try to use a crayon? Keep the “trash” that first time or two.

Little Llama Keepsake Calendar original watercolor art by kimenink.com

More Ways to Journal Baby’s First Year

There are so many ways to journal and track memories.

We don’t want to make you feel pressured to do it all, especially since you have a busy, busy life right now. And holding baby is much more important than making a beautiful journal.

However, if this is your thing, we’d love to hear your ideas that are important to your journal.

And please follow us on our Baby Journaling Board.