Preserving The Moment

"New Mum On The Block "
Nelson District Parent Centre Newsletter September/October 2006

I'm a Virgo who loves a good project. I like to organise, plan and manage things. I practically organised the whole of our outdoor wedding with just under 100 guests. I enjoyed it. Mostly...But sometimes the logical Virgo side of me gets bowled over by my flaky Pisces side that is also part of my astrological makeup. At times I can procrastinate and choose to live in the moment, leaving things to sort themselves out another day. Astrological shortcomings aside, basically I swing between being on to it – and not. Hence why capturing some special moments in Amelia's early life got captured – and some didn't.

The traditional way to celebrate a babies arrival into the Western world is to announce the babies birth in the newspaper – including weight, sex, name and time, thanking as many people as you like. Then there's the matter of capturing your wee bundles arrival with a camera – still or moving – the choice is yours. Baby footprints and/or hand prints are another memento a lot of people go for in the early months. And don't forget the placenta . If you're not sure what to do with it you could always keep it in your freezer for a bit until you find an alternative home for it. Just make sure everyone in your household knows it's there as I have heard a horror story about a case of mistaken identity.

Will Amelia forgive us in time when she realises that not only did her parents never announce to the world, or to Nelson at least, her arrival in the local newspaper but that we never planted a tree over her placenta or bothered to get molds of her wee hands or feet?
Maybe discussing the above with hubby before she arrived might have helped. I was operating in a blur for the first couple of months, perhaps a side-effect of a general or maybe it was just early motherhood. My organisational skills fell to the wayside. Form filling just wasn't an option and my short-term memory was shorter than ever. In fact, I think I had the memory of a goldfish for the first few months of my daughters life.

But all is not lost. Within hours of Amelia's arrival we updated our family web site from the maternity ward at Nelson hospital. Hubby went home and sent the link out to friends and family so they had all the credentials and a photo of a brand-spanking Amelia.

Thanks to our monthly family web site we have managed to capture snippets of Amelia's early months via photos and verbal descriptions on her own web page. I even print these pages out and store them in transparent folder from Warehouse Stationary. It's the best I can do. As simply put I'm no arts and crafts whiz. Scrapbooking is back in vogue and I wish I had the knack. But I'm all thumbs when it comes to dealing with scraps of paper and glue. Even with six years of Graphic Design under my belt, the thought of cutting up small pieces of paper and sticking them strategically in a scrapbook makes me wince.

We filmed Amelia a bit during her first year so we have a DVD that hubby proudly edited that captures her growth almost monthly. It starts when she is around a month old and finishes at her 1st birthday party. We haven't filmed her for a few months so need to get on to it again before her Amelia-speak turns into real sentences. Hubby and I are also rather snap-happy with our digital camera so there are literally hundreds of photos of Amelia stored in the hard-drives on our computers.

A friend gave me a journal for recording milestones in the 1st year. I started off with good intentions of filling it in. I think I got to about six months and then got my weeks mixed up and the journaling came to an abrupt halt. But there is the WellChild Health Book. There are a lot of moments captured in there. You can see that Amelia has had all her shots, what her height and weight was at different stages, as well as all her different “quirks” along the way. Recently I saw an attractive material-bound cover designed for the WellChild Health Book in a local children's gift shop. Not a bad idea. Perhaps I should get one myself.

So I think there is a lesson in all this. Invent your own way of capturing your child's arrival into the world and the precious moments that follow. There are no rules. Do what is natural and works for you. Even if those milestones aren't recorded in every traditional way possible.