When you have far-off friends and family who don’t get to see your precious bundle in person, posting their big moments – and, let’s be honest, little moments – on Facebook and Instagram can be the next best thing. But for your own private perusal, nothing beats the old-fashioned appeal of a baby record book. After all, it’s much more fun to pore over a physical book in years to come when they’re horrible teenagers than it is to scroll endlessly down a Facebook wall, and hopefully, you might just find the best baby memory book for you in our top list.
- For the prospective cool auntie/uncle, here’s our roundup of the best baby shower gifts to please baby and parents alike
- From baby books to… well, baby books, these are our top picks for baby’s first library
Depending on your tastes, a lot of what goes into a good baby book might be the design, and our list has both more traditional and contemporary options that are sure to keep their appeal across the years. As with so many things, though, it’s what’s inside that counts. With this in mind, our best baby keepsake book is the , which performs as both pregnancy journal and baby book and leaves lots of room for photos and notes throughout.
Handmakers Illustries at notonthehighstreet have lovingly created a book that’ll be with you from your first weeks of pregnancy up to baby’s first birthday, creating a compendium of all those exciting memories in one place. Pregnancy journal, baby memory book and guestbook in one, this handmade baby book features advice, room for messages from family and friends, dedicated spaces for a names shortlist, labour countdown, gender reveal, ultrasounds, first birthday photos and more, as well as all the prerequisite bits and bobs like weight and eye colour.
We love this contemporary baby book by Julien Macdonald for its minimal white and gold script design, with a few Kate Spade-esque polka dots thrown in for good measure, but there’s more to it than meets the eye, and that’s what gives it our second spot. Reviewers loved this book’s ample spaces for writing and photographs, as well as dedicated pages for first birthday, Christmas, holiday and Christening or naming day. What really sets it apart, though, is the wealth of pockets for keepsakes, such as the hospital bracelet.
Like the Illustries baby journal, this baby memory book by Pearhead is part photo journal, part memory album, with over 60 pages for you to fill in from the moment you find out you’ve got a bundle of joy on the way all the way, all the way through their first milestones. It’s available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, ideal for multilingual families, but it’s the included in pad we like the most, engineered with a clean-touch design that means baby’s hands and feet don’t have to touch the ink, but you still get prints to treasure.
This adorably illustrated baby memory book has an appealing scrapbook style with its inclusion of the touchable as well as writing and photographs. Like the Julien Macdonald baby book, there’s a pocket to hold precious keepsakes, plus a magnetic closure to ensure nothing goes astray, and the 3D photo frames throughout are a lovely tactile touch too. It’s also a nice alternative if you prefer a more traditional design to those of the contemporary record books in our first three spots, with its sweet sheep motif and palette of soft greys.
This baby book’s neutral design ensures it won’t look dated in years to come, and the thick sewn-in pages are built to stand the test of time too. This is good news for avid scrapbookers, as it means they’re built to withstand the weight of pictures, notes and small keepsakes, and those of a creative inclination are sure to love the storytelling format too. A mix of journal, photo album and scrapbook, with space to record details from the world around your baby (pop culture, current events, and all that good stuff) as well as their milestones, it’s a great all-round time capsule.
For those who find more pared-back baby books a little dry, this colourful, gorgeously illustrated is sure to appeal. Its adorable front cover gives it something of a picture book style, but inside, reviewers were pleased with the abundance of space to record all those milestones of baby’s first year and beyond, with well thought-out sections from About Mummy and Daddy and Before I Arrived to My First Holiday and My Fourth Birthday. There’s plenty of space for little details too, including a Just to Say section, which users loved.
It may not be a book for milestones, but this baby shower guestbook is no less a memory book for it. Sweetly illustrated with animal characters, just like our previous pick, it leaves lots of space (40 lined pages, to be exact) for your shower guests to record their memories and well-wishes for the new arrival. With its thoughtful high-quality packaging, it makes a great baby shower gift in itself, although with a personalisable inner for the parents to be, you might want to fill that bit in first. Whatever you choose, it seems that you’re in for a beautifully put-together package.
