Here is the hard truth. You will end up buying a baby scrapbook before this is all over and yoou most likely will not put anything in that book. Okay, maybe you will, but then I guarantee you that child number two’s scrapbook will not be finished, and child number three’s scrapbook won’t even be started, and child number four… well did you even bother buying one?
Okay, you got me, that’s my story and I shouldn’t make assumptions about your abilities to follow through, but it does happen. We, as parents, get busy, fast. Our lives get hectic, and while there is beauty in the chaos, it doesn’t really allow for a lot of scrapbooking time after baby arrives. All good intentions aside, we tend to lose track of the memory-preserving during all the memory-making excitement.
Case in point: below (image coming soon) is a hard truth of four unfinshed baby books for my own children. I’m a photographer and I don’t even have completed baby books for three of my kids. The first one has a few pages, so he’s the lucky duck, but I think that is common in a lot of families. I do recall going through my own baby book as a young adult and noticing a stark difference in the amount of completeness between my book and my older brother’s book.
So what do you do to make sure your kiddos have an actual album to look back at years from now? Well, I say, buy that scrapbook no matter what this jaded photographer has to say about it. I mean I do have every intention of filling each of my kids’ books at some point, like before they leave for college. It’s a personal project of mine that I most likely will accomplish. (Just FYI, as I write this we are currently dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the stay-at-home order to stop the spread of the disease, so I think I might have found my next home project while we wait this out).
But back to your journey and your baby books. I encourage you to start early with anything baby related, especially scrapbooks and albums. Buy your album even before baby arrives so you can plan ahead for what you will need to document. Many albums these days will provide space for much more than just pictures, but notes about baby’s growth and milestones, and even common everyday facts like how much a gallon of milk costs, so you can compare it years later. I think my son’s baby album was one of the first items I purchased as an expectant momma. The idea of preserving memories as precious as your newborn’s first days of life is something we all share as parents and we all should try our best to do, even if life takes over and we don’t quite make it to the finish line with that particular project.
But in case you don’t get as far as you would like with your scrapbook I would suggest adding an album to your newborn portrait session. This is the perfect fallback to get you by until (if you’re like me) you have to wait for a pandemic to get caught up on baby scrapbooking.
Newborn sessions have all the makings for a great first baby album. You will have cute poses of baby alone, close ups of ten tiny fingers and toes, and the little button nose. There are portraits with the parents, siblings and even grandparents. And we like to encourage families to bring in a favorite blanket or stuffed animal to add to the memories. When we design our newborn albums at Miller’s Portrait we even add date of birth and newborn vitals to the layout along with a favorite verse, quote, or any information you would like to capture forever. And if you think that’s exciting, try our first year package which will give you an album with memories from pregnancy through the one year milestone session. Still think you have no time for scrapbooking after baby arrives? Let us help you with the memories.
