Becoming a mother: why I wrote pregnancy memories for my child

What would you want your child to know about their first moments? What details of pregnancy would you want to come back to? This is for you, if you're looking to document for future generations

Before I got pregnant, I bought two empty notebooks. Without guarantee that I would be pregnant again, I started trusting that some day it would happen. So I may as well buy two empty booklets to write to my two future children. From the moment I decided that these are for my future children, I relaxed and thought that so it will be.

I also realized that I had very little knowledge of how my mother felt or what she experienced while expecting me. Was she excited, nervous, worried, happy, emotional? What else was going on at the time? I had no idea, which is why I decided to write some of those things down.

Something that future generations can come back to

The inspiration partially also came from my yoga teacher. My yoga teacher shared how her grandmother had left her grandchildren dozens of memories and notebooks where she had documented her life for future generations. I found that intriguing and such a wonderful gift to future generations. We can all write blogs like this but they’re not personal the same way as those hand written notebooks that are purely private and shared only with a few people.

Nothing beats a personal letter, an actual hand written diary or a personal memoirs that you can hand over to your children or grandchildren. There are so many unanswered questuions that I have about my grandparents that I just wish I would have had the chance to ask while they were still here.

Knowing this, it inspired me to write some of those feelings and memories down for my child.

When you really want a child, you start to form a relationship with them already when expecting. Maybe even from before. Documenting this phase of expectation also gave me a sense of “this is truly happening - I’m becoming a mother and you’re truly arriving.” It was an exercise of trust that helped me focus on trusting instead of worrying. And already start building a relationship with who’s to come.

What to include in your pregnancy diary?

Everyone decides what feels important for them, but for me, I wrote down some individual memories and feelings, collected some photos, like our baby’s ultra sound photos. We also have a leaflet from a concert we went to with my partner, which was very likely my child’s first sensation of music before birth. At the time he had started to hear some sounds inside the womb.

I also have some feelings written down what the expectation has taught me: surrendering and letting go of control. I can’t decide when my child arrives. I can’t haste. I can’t tell him that Hey, get out of there already! I don’t make the decision.

You see, he’s already teaching me things: patience and letting go of control. And I hope that I remember that later too. So in a way the little notebook is also something I can come back to if I need to.

To the same notebook, I’m planning to write down memories of his baby year too. So when he’s older, he can receive a personal booklet of how much he was loved already before he was born, how I hoped for him for long, and how grateful I was from the moment I started expecting him.

I have also written down some life lessons and realizations to the little notebook so that perhaps some day when he needs advice, and if I’m not there to share it at that very moment, maybe he can find some comfort and love in this little booklet.

So, to put it short, if you’re hoping to get pregnant or you’re pregnant, or even for your current children, I can strongly recommend documenting it.

It can help you connect with your child, your body, your pregnancy, and when you look back to read the booklet, you can perhaps see a pattern that written stories tend to form. Perhaps the booklet afterwards can be your way to see that you worried fro nothing and everything actually went well.