Maybe you’re a regular scrapbooker, or perhaps you were gifted your first at your baby shower. Either way, being busy with your new baby might not have given you the time to work on the task. Now that the baby is older, and you’re organizing their things, you’re going to need to know what to put in a baby scrapbook.
Put your most important and favorite memories into a baby scrapbook. Everything from handprints to clothing can fill a page. Get creative by choosing a theme and documenting special moments as your baby grows.
There’s no wrong answer on what to put inside a scrapbook. The benefit of having a book is having something to look back on as your child grows. Who knows, your child may even be able to share it with their kids one day.
Keep reading for some classic ideas to put in your baby scrapbook along with some you haven’t thought of yet.
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What to put in a baby scrapbook
To determine what to put in a baby scrapbook, choose mementos from important days and your baby’s favorite things. Keepsakes from birth are a great start but don’t forget to add moments from pregnancy, birthdays, and special days.
Often scrapbooks are given at baby showers and can sit on the shelf. If your scrapbook has collected dust and you weren’t saving mementos from the beginning, don’t worry. All you need to make the perfect scrapbook is a little love, and as a parent, you have a lot of that to give.
There’s no wrong time to start a baby scrapbook. Even if you’re cleaning and organizing, scrapbooking can help you determine what to keep and what to donate. So, pull out all your baby’s things and make a scrapbook page for any of the items you can seem to let go of.
Here are some ideas of what to put in a baby scrapbook.
Keepsakes from birth
The day the baby is born is a big day and offers a lot of keepsakes. You can add photos of mom, baby, and the whole family. But this day provides a lot to choose from. You can use almost anything from that day, including:
- The first outfit the baby wore
- Hospital bracelets
- Blankets
- Newborn Beanie/Hat
- First footprint/ handprint
- Unused newborn size diaper
If you think you can’t fit the baby’s whole first outfit or blanket into the book, you can always cut a piece of the fabric. Another option is to save the outfit in a frame and take a photo. Add the photo of the outfit and the baby in it in your scrapbook.
You can also use the fabric from your baby’s clothes in other exciting ways as a keepsake. Making quilts from baby clothes is a popular choice. You can use one square in your scrapbook with photos of your baby with the quilt.
Mementos from baby’s first day at home
Once you leave the hospital, you’ll have a lot more firsts. You’ll have to use a car seat, drive home very slowly, and introduce the baby to their new home—chart and document memories from photos, old keys, or directions from the hospital.
Pregnancy Pages
Even before the baby arrives, you start creating memories. You can save a lot from the pregnancy, including:
- Ultrasound photos
- A photo of the pregnancy test
- Pictures of your growing bump
- Baby shower souvenirs
You can also add special moments from the baby shower or gender reveal. Pregnancy pages are important if you’re creating a timeline. It’s fun to show everything from the time you found out you were pregnant to the day you found out the gender, up until the day of birth.
Hand/footprints
Don’t stop documenting after the first hand/footprints from birth. Keep them going as a nice decorative picture on each of your pages. You can use handprints in the background as transitional pages to show how the baby grows throughout the book. You can also put them all in one place and show how your little animal evolved.
Lock of hair
A lock of hair will show you the way your baby’s hair changes. The first haircut is a special moment because your baby starts to look more and more like a little person. Shedding their baby hair is a part of that. You can tape hair strands to a page or place them between pages of a photobook.
Baby’s Favorite Things
Does your child have a favorite book, song, or TV show? Place stickers of their favorite characters so you can never forget how you watched Mighty Pups and Cocomelon 8 billion times between 2020 and 2022. It will make you and your child laugh in the future when you recall what songs would help them fall asleep at night.
Put a picture of the album cover of their favorite song, favorite book, or decorate a page with the lyrics to their favorite nursery rhyme. It might even help you remember all the lyrics to hush little baby.
Memories/special days
Your little one probably won’t remember the very first road trip they took to grandma’s house, so choose a page and dedicate it to travel. You can add special moments like the wapper of the first snack they had on the road.
A big day to remember will be their first birthday. Invitations and decorations make great keepsakes and can easily be cut and taped down into your book.
Important Firsts
Everything your baby does, in the beginning, is their first time. Everything being new means there are a lot of important firsts to choose from. Rolling over, walking, and crawling may be hard to catch, but you can choose physical items that remind you of the moment. For example, save a photo and the socks or shoes the baby wore when they walked for the first time.
Photos
Of course, you’ll want to put photos of your baby. Use them to showcase what a baby looked like as they grew that first year of life. Create a monthly timeline that counts up to their first birthday.
You can also use your photos to document some of the bigger items you can’t save. If you have a growth chart on the wall, take a picture to add it to the book as well.
Letter from loved ones
The scrapbook may be for you now, but this book can be for them in the future. Write letters for your child on their day of birth and on birthdays, so they have something of yours from that time too. It’ll be a beautiful way to see how you all changed over time. Ask other people in the baby’s life to do the same and it’ll be a memory you can all share as a family.
Current events and facts
While you may want to skip out on most discussions about 2020, it’s a big deal that babies were still making their appearance. Remind yourself and show your baby what was going on in the world when they decided to show up. It’ll show that no matter how much goes on in the world, one tiny person can make everything change.
Current events and facts about history are important for shaping the future. Your baby is a part of that history, so document where they were born in the course of history. Add a newspaper or a billboard chart from the day they were born.
You can also do this on special days to compare what was happening on the baby’s 1st birthday or the first day they came home.
Summary: What to put in a baby scrapbook
If you’re a parent and a crafter, you have the perfect combination to make a scrapbook for your baby. But even if you’re new to the world of parenting or crafting, it’s a fun task that your child will appreciate if they ever become a parent.
It’s fun to go through the memories, and it turns out scrapbooking is an excellent way to organize as well. So clean out the onesies your baby can’t fit anymore and turn them into pages in your scrapbook. Along with pictures, song lyrics, and handprints, you can create a design for any keepsakes you might have.
Between special days, firsts, and current events, you’ve had a lot of moments with your baby. The hard part is choosing which moment was the most special to you.