The U.S. won’t win any awards for work-life balance any time soon. Even the most well-meaning parents find themselves daydreaming about work while spending ‘quality’ time with their kids.
Combat your workaholic nature by spending more time active with family projects. Check out these reasons why every new mother should start a baby journal for their child.
You Don’t Have Time
Working moms will never find enough time to be the perfect mom and the perfect employee. There are moments you’ll miss when trying to find the right balance between work and parenting.
Keep a baby journal with you in the office to mark important occasions you can’t experience first hand. Spending time updating the baby journal can’t replace actual time with your child, but it does allow you to stay involved with your child’s memories while you’re away from home.
Keeping a baby journal doesn’t have to be a solo sport.
Use the daily reports from your child’s caregivers, texts or email messages as references when creating a journal. If you have a nanny, ask them to take pictures to mark occasions as they happen.
You Can’t Remember Anything
The way pregnancy affects memory can be cruel. In an effort to empower women, myths arose that challenged the idea that your memory is any different while pregnant and after.
This is an unfortunate myth because it can leave you thinking your mind still has the same infinite powers after childbirth as it did before childbirth. Forgetting the date your child got his first tooth isn’t a sign of a lower IQ, but that the brain is overloaded with new stimuli.
Studies show that sleep loss, breastfeeding, and new responsibilities can all scramble the brain making it impossible for some moms to keep up with every detail of parenting. A baby journal keeps up with the important memories for you.
In a few years, when you are pitching green beans as a delicious dinner option, you can reveal photos of your child’s first mashed veggie encounter to support your claim.
You Want a Legacy
Baby journals are the bible of your child’s childhood. Don’t rely on memory to keep these sacred records alive.
You are bound to have sections of the journal that don’t seem to fit your lifestyle or situation. Feel free to either skip these pages or opt for custom booklet printing after designing your own baby journal.
Printing a custom journal is great for starting your family legacy. You can create sections specific to your family’s culture and traditions.
This turns your baby journal into a keepsake that becomes a vital part of history. It can be handed down over generations to preserve family stories.
You Need Stress Relief
Meditation isn’t for everyone. The idea of sitting still to release stress might only bring up the urge to check your email or replay a conversation in your head you had with a client at work.
Give your brain a break from the stresses of work-life by putting together your baby journal each week. Scrapbooking is about layering moments in your life to tell a complete story.
Use your creativity to style each page according to the theme. Clip art, stickers or markers push the artistic boundaries for your baby journal.
Objects like hospital wristbands are great to include in your baby journal but too many bulky items or decorations will make it difficult for the book to close when you’re done.
Books that won’t close become a storage issue and are more likely to have items fall out. If you have a family heirloom you want to be associated with your child’s birth, take a photo of the heirloom and add it to the book instead of the original, irreplaceable item.
You Want a Healthy Baby
The doctor’s office is one place where answers about your baby need to be accurate. Your doctor can’t track your baby’s progress without your help.
Make sure there is a section in your baby journal for notes on your baby’s daily activities. In the event your baby breaks out in a rash or starts losing sleep, knowing the baby’s recent foods or activity changes will help you find the problem faster.
You also won’t feel foolish making up answers to questions about bowel movement frequency when you actually have no idea the last time you changed a poopy diaper.
The doctor can also help ease any of your developmental worries if you have a baby journal on hand. Developmental milestones will differ from child to child but there’s a general range your child should fall within.
The baby journal shows the doctor important details that can help them determine whether or not your child is on track. Tracking developmental milestones can also give you hope for the future.
It might be time to start the official countdown to your child eating solid food or sleeping through the night. With a baby journal, you unleash the doctor’s superpower of making predictions about the baby’s behavior in the next few months.
You Have the World’s Cutest Baby
Proud moms sometimes have no other reason to keep a baby journal except the knowledge they have the world’s cutest baby. Show off your baby when friends and relatives come to visit.
Bring along your baby journal to holiday dinners to keep your aging grandparents in the loop on new teeth, favorite foods, and toys. Baby journals help extended family members get to know your child while sharing the intense cuteness you get to experience every day.
Time to Start a Baby Journal
Baby journaling isn’t a part-time sport. Keep a baby journal that offers lots of flexibility in the way you store information and memories.
These details help keep your child healthy and give your family memories to cherish for decades to come. For more information and lifestyle tips, check our blog for updates.