Your favourite way to remember becoming a parent

lilmissreading

As you can see from my signature we are hopefully awaiting the arrival of our first child, who also has the fortunate position of being first great grandchild, grandchild on both sides, great nephew and nephew.

I would like our little man to know his story started before he arrived.

Some suggestions already made to us:

Buy a newspaper the day of his birth
Get a silver or wooden Christmas decoration for the tree with his name on
Record our own and family feelings about his arrival on camcorder
Take pictures of us when I'm pregnant
Keep a pregnancy diary (big fat fail from me, spent too much time being miserable about symptoms)
Write him a letter pre birth

Does anyone have other ideas that they did or wish they did?

Thanks

lulu_92

When my auntie had her two children she found coins (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2) that had their birth years on (2002 & 2004), and framed them in their bedrooms.

She was constantly on the hunt but it made finding the right ones even more rewarding.

notanewuser

I don't wish I'd done anything before DD arrived (odd idea to me) but I have done photo story books since she arrived. Takes forever, but has all of the major things she's done, milestones and cutest pics in. She's almost 4, and I'm a bit behind having not done one for this year yet.

What I wish I had done was keep a diary of the first year. Babies change so much and apart from almost daily emails to my mum (who was living abroad) I don't have a clear record of how she grew and changed IYSWIM.

Mad-Frog

Photos of your belly as near the due day as possible

Prices - the price of houses ( he /she will be amazed at how 'cheap' they were)
Food prices, clothes, photos of home town especially fields in case of development

Fashion, pop song number one, TV programmes, add major newspaper incidents over the years.what cars look like and price, cost of passports, tax, etc

It's all about the price :Dn:p

My very treasured thing I own is a cheap note book my grandmother made of our holiday in the south, it contains photos and written words of our daily trips, we a kids contributed with spelling mistakes galore ... It's fab

Gra76

I did a quick video-tour of the house on the night we went in to have our eldest induced. Seemed like a good idea at the time and we still watch it once in a while to remind ourselves how young we looked and what junk we had in the house at the time.

shiny76

No.1 Album?

lilmissreading

Some lovely ideas here - just the kind of thing we were after! It seems that the first year sprints by so quickly that if we don't pull ourselves together in that time it would be nice to have some simple things ready in our minds before the exhaustion takes over...

pinkduvetdiva

I bought one of these when my honorary nephew was born... http://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCK-UK-Life-Story-Diary/dp/B001OIXVXK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411129082&sr=1-1&keywords=life+story

continualdiamond

Whilst I was pregnant my hubby took photos of me throughout it and I bought a pregnancy diary, tatty teddy one as it wasn't too much info to fill in so had time.

I also bought baby's matching book and that covers certain milestones and things like 1st Christmas, 1st bday, 1st holiday etc.

I had a teddy bear made out of her clothes she wore in hospital and the lady who made it put her name on it as well.

Hubby bought a newspaper the day she was born, credit to him as I never thought of doing that.

I wrote my daughter a letter when my maternity leave ended, just telling her all the stuff we got up too whilst we were getting to know each other.

If you sign up for some baby clubs you get photo book offers and I created a 0-3 month book for nothing, obviously you can't go crazy with loads of pages. I'm yet to do the 3 -6 and 6-9 but I'll do it eventually, lol.

Caroline_a

Maybe a bit contentious, but I didn't do anything and am not really sorry I didnt. My pre-pregnancy memories are stored away in my head, and I'm not sure that keeping a load of stuff like has been suggested would be anything more than drawer fillers. Imagine if it was from your mum. Nice to have maybe, but stays in a drawer or in the attic. Probably would get lost in a house move.

Additionally, it's the sort of thing that would embarrass a teenager dreadfully! No, I prefer to tell my kids the stories of that time - I think we have lost a lot of the art of story telling and passing it down the generations. They then can chose to remember it or forget.

SailorSam

Oh yes i remember that afternoon behind the bike sheds.