The Dwindling Baby Book Syndrome

If you are still parenting your first and only child, you may not fully appreciate this phenomenon yet. You'll probably read this post and wonder how a mother could become so complacent. You'll think to yourself that you would never, ever be that mom. I know, because I used to say those types of things all the time. I have my own mom, husband, and sister-in-law to remind me. I often eat my words from days of parenting past.

"I'll never let my car be so messy."

"I'll never let my kids play with toy guns." 

"I'll record every important moment of my child's life for all eternity." 

Okay, that last one was kind of an exaggeration, but it's what I'm writing about today. I'm calling it The Dwindling Baby Book Syndrome. Remember when you were expecting your first baby, and you chose your baby book with care? You filled in everything that you could as soon as you found out you were pregnant. You completed the family tree and answered all of the history and pop culture questions. You know, info about the President, popular movies, favorite songs. You documented all of your cravings and bouts of morning sickness. You stuffed it with ultrasound photos and the results from your glucose tolerance test. You probably even taped your pregnancy test stick to it somewhere. You were taking belly shots at least monthly, maybe even daily since the invention of selfies. They did not exist when I was pregnant with my first baby. We actually had to develop FILM. 

Once pregnancy was through, and your precious little bundle was in your arms, the real fun started.  Now you could record all of the famous firsts you had been dreaming about for months or maybe even years. First wet diaper, first dirty diaper, first spit up, first time he latched on, first time he slept on daddy...and those are just within the first week. 

Think of all the big moments that happen in a baby's first year. Doctor visits, going to the store, visiting Grandma, smiling, rolling over, laughing, sitting up, eating solid foods, first tooth, crawling, holding toys, throwing toys, blowing kisses. walking, talking. Awww, just thinking back to those moments in my babies' lives makes me sigh and smile. An entire book is dedicated to documenting a baby's first year of life. Wasn't it fun to spend a few quiet moments every day or two recording the newness and awesomeness of your baby? 

If you were like most people and waited longer than a year to deliver your second child, you probably kept on recording fun things about your first born well after the first birthday. We were not that family. Number two came along just fourteen months after number one. So, during the whole pregnancy for her, I was still in baby mode for the first one. How was I supposed to document a pregnancy and document a first year? How you ask? I wasn't! 

That's how The Dwindling Baby Book Syndrome started for us. Ours just started a little earlier than most. I was not able to keep up with the demands of entering every little detail into each child's baby book. I do remember having a book for number two, but the entries are much less frequent. The pregnancy section is pretty non-existent. Throwing up for four months while taking care of another baby just wasn't conducive to writing. 

We all know what happens next. The more babies who enter the home, the less time there is to record the details. Way less information and way fewer photos are included in the baby books for babies number two and three. It's not that we weren't cherishing the moments and wanting to record them. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I would think, "Oh, he smiled today, I should write it in the baby book." Then, somebody would need a diaper change, Cheerios would spill across the floor, or I would fall asleep in the rocking chair, and the thought would simply disappear. 

By the time we were up to number four, I did not even spend the money on an actual Baby Book. I knew I would never write in it.  My mom bought me a calendar instead. It's the busy mom's baby book that I highly recommend. It came with hundreds of cute stickers that listed all the typical firsts. When I remembered, I could just peel off a sticker and place it on the date something important happened, or I should say around the date it happened. That's the beauty of it all, and the beauty of having multiple babies. You finally learn to give yourself a break. Maybe he lost his belly button on November 16th, maybe the 19th, who knows. Whenever I look back at that calendar, I'll never remember or even care that I fudged the date a little.

So, the lesson here is, if you are feeling guilty for not documenting your second, third, or tenth child's life as well as your first, please give yourself permission to get over it. It's okay, I promise!

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