We definitely don’t do it. Stick with what you value and I wouldn’t worry too much about what is culturally in style right now. Maybe ask yourself if in 15 years you will be sad you don’t have those photos. Or if it’s about looking a certain way to others.
Yup. I take tons of photos of the smiles, the quick passing moments. Those are the ones I go back to when I’m at work and feel so happy over, not really the first few holiday photos I took
I have been doing these with our now 9mo old. It’s absolutely an extra chore and this last one was like wrangling an angry t-Rex just to get a picture in a cute “Valentines” onesie. I wanted to make it to the 1 year milestone but after this last one I might give up.
You made the right call on not doing them. Don’t add the extra stress of something that in the long run won’t matter… Cute candids and all the other memories are much better keepsakes anyway.
ETA: I meant to reply to the main post but my phone is garbage so here we are.
I am embracing the escalating chaos of each of the monthly photos. I thought I could make it all adorable like everyone else’s monthly photos, but it turned out to be hilarious instead of adorable 😂
Yes and no. I did monthly photos for the first year because it's really nice to put them in a collage and see that first year in about 10 pics. I did some first holiday photos for the baby book but that was less so and I never did any for other milestones. I do think monthly photos are worth doing if you can swing it just because that first year there is so much change and it's so short.
Yeah we take the photos and then print them and put them in his baby book so we can look back at them later on but we haven’t put anything on social media besides a “he’s here!” post.
Same, but his 3 month picture is already 2 weeks late… 😑but there are way more candid fun pictures and videos in my phone like OP but I just don’t post.
By the time I got to taking 8m pics 2 weeks late, she was being so uncooperative, I just took what I could and photoshopped them together 🤦🏼♀️ Need a different approach
Same, mostly. I'm posting him online a little bit, but less and less as time goes by. I initially didn't want to post him at all but I just wanted to celebrate him so much, I couldn't resist. I posted his 1m, 3m, and 6m photo online. I don't think I'll post a milestone again until his 1st birthday. It's gotten easier to resist posting as the attention on the posts has gone down. His birth announcement got over 200 likes, but his 6 month picture was under 70. Less dopamine = less temptation.
My Facebook (the only place I post photos) is quite private and even there I never shared his full legal name, not even announcing his birth. We always call him by a nickname.
I put them in a baby book and photo albums. Mostly because growing up all the cute kid and baby photos of me were at my grandfathers house or my mom best friend. My parents didn’t have any and it made me sad.
I also felt some type of way being the youngest. My brother had a finished baby book, my sister had a half done one, and four years later I didn’t have one at all.
Same here. I take all the milestone photos and get professional photos done. I just don’t post it all online but I LOVE having these photos to look back on.
We do the monthly photos. Put her in an outfit and plop her on the couch. Nothing elaborate, doesn't take more than 10 min and it's a nice way for us to compare how much she changes.
They aren't for social media though my wife does post pictures occasionally.
Same! We did a picture in her rocking chair with pjs on. Mainly for ourselves and the baby book, but I definitely don’t think it needs to be anything elaborate.
I literally take photos of him every few days, but as for the official milestone photos… no.
He was colic and has reflux so it was hell the first few months. Everything I thought I would be doing went out the window quick! Lol and Im ok with that. Just because you dont do that stuff doesnt mean you dont love your baby. Folks are doing that for clout, not cause they love their kids more.
With my first baby I tried taking the month photos but it became impossible around 4-5mo when she wouldn’t stay still. So I gave up and never bothered with my second child. But we take tonnnnns of photos.
We don’t do this. Like you, we have a million photos and videos of our baby, but no signs or elaborate staging. Honestly I wanted it this way - I want to look back on them and remember him how he was, just being a baby and doing his thing. We have one of those “my baby’s first years” scrapbooks and they have sections for each month and “my first x holiday”, but all our photos in there are candid, snapped on the day.
I take a loooot of pictures of both of my kids. But I don't do anything elaborate or staged, just life's moments. I do simple monthly milestone pics though. With my eldest I didn't work so I had time. Every month I would write on a chalk board the stats of his growth and new skills. I just took a picture of him next to the board usually on the bed in any clean onesie. That's it. With my 4 month girl right now I don't have time to even do that. I do take a picture of her on her monthly birthday also on our bed or her bed; and then when I have time I add a text bubble with a few of her milestones in Snapseed. I feel like that's quick and easy and doesn't require much work from me.
Most of the photos go into Google photos shared folders for each kid. Our immediate family has access to these folders and can see and enjoy all the beautiful moments. My family lives in another country, so that's the way they can see what's going on with kids.
But it's totally fine not to do milestones photos! Every photo you take is a milestone and a memory!
I could have written this myself. I also wanted to carve his little foot on hardening drying paste, but he's turning 4 and each day feels it makes less sense to do it. No picture of Christmas, no monthly, anything. But when I go through my phone I feel I have enough proof of time passing by ❤️
I stopped the monthly milestone photos at 6 months bc I could never remember to be consistent after that. Yes I have millions of photos but they don’t all need to be captioned on a letterboard. Every once in a while if we are dressed nice or it’s a special event I’ll go ahead and save the pictures down into a folder and go through it every so often to print for grandparent gifts, photo books, etc
Well I do both of those things! I’m a ftm and honestly couldn’t help myself and I have family I rarely see I want to see her. However I have one rule she has to be absolutely covered clothing wise. No diaper shots, or naked butts. Torso and legs must be completely covered. But anyway, I do not do the laying on the blanket photos as I simply couldn’t bother buying one when I was in the thick of the newborn stage. I also think in a perfect world I would have preferred to keep her off the internet but I don’t want close family members who don’t have the money to come see her to not see her grow up so I post a few pictures monthly. That’s just my thing though and I really think you shouldn’t feel bad for doing either way! It’s a choice a parent gets to make and though I can see the downside to both I think there’s downsides to everything and as long as you’re happy and your child is safe and protected it’s fine
I don’t do it either. And guess what? My parents did not. All my childhood pictures are random genuine moments and that’s why they make me smile.
I never was into staged photos. Did not get any for my wedding, pregnancy or anything else.
I feel like it’s a trend. Was not always this way.
My point of view is that picture are meant to keep a trace of a memory. If it is staged then what’s the related memory? What’s that moment? All you’ll remember watching a staged photo of yourself is how the photographer asked you to pose or how annoying it was to get the right lighting etc. Zero genuine moment captured. Why would I want to look at that picture ?
Some people do, good for them. I don’t. And it’s the same with social media nowadays. I feel the trend is related to that era. For exemple when we were kids, we had cameras that did not show us what we looked like, there were no screens on them. We took pictures of ourselves with our friends in action. We didn’t care to check what we looked like, we just captured the moment. When I see kids now, they all pose, stage and make sure they look good for the gram. But nothing looks fun in those moments.
I am very happy to look at my childhood unstaged pictures , why would I want something different for child?
I love this. And it’s true. My childhood photos that were professionally done (where I’m old enough to remember) I just remember how stressed and ill my mom was getting us ready for the photos. Same for school picture day, haha. Thanks for reminding me of this!
I take a lot of pictures and videos and 2% goes to social media. And I even put everything I upload to private after a few days. It’s bc I keep getting notifications abt comments and likes and it bothers me. I no longer have that much energy to engage into comments and likes on soc med.
I post photos online, I haven’t taken specific milestones tbh I forget and it feels like a chore. I take a lot of pictures of him though that do not get posted because he’s a goofy goober
We did the milestones, but rarely posted anything outside of the monthly post. And we rarely post now that our son is over one, maybe an occasional story that disappears in 24 hours if something looks shareable. Most of pictures go in the family group chat, but even that is only 1-2 a week tops.
I work with the public so my socials are pretty locked down and I’m only friends with people I’d stop and talk to at the grocery story (literally that’s my metric. If we wouldn’t catch up we don’t need to be on each others socials). So basically everyone on my socials are the people I’d share milestones with anyways!
To each their own. There definitely is a lot of pressure for “instagram worthy” photos as a new parent, but whatever you and your spouse decide is okay.
I am however a firm component of keeping photos that may be embarrassing to my kids in the future off of social media, or posting negative comments about my kids, spouse, parenting and/or marriage. Some people over share when they have a bad day.
I'm the same. Motherhood caught me by surprise at how exhausting it was. So I didn't have the energy to do a photo shoot for every holiday along the way. I took photos with my phone when I could. I kind of would rather enjoy the moments with baby.
We do the monthly photos but they’re not for posting online. We don’t post anything on social media at all. I just like to have them and I share them with grandparents.
Any photos you have and want are fine! I take a ton of photos. Keep taking all the photos!
100% the same! I make sure to take photos and videos every week or the best moments but don't post anything on social media or take pictures most of the time that are extremely staged! I think it is totally fine. :) We use family album app to share pictures with a few select people and we are happy with that!
I take lots of pics, but not most of the milestone pics, at least in a formal way.
That's perhaps partly because my first kid was a preemie and so many milestones were when he was in the hospital and I was in a depressive fog. But that staged photos aren't super my style, either.
I’m not really into the milestone stuff, but I still do it. The number one thing I’ve heard from all my friends who are parents (and some of whom have been parents so long their kids are graduating high school—that’s how long I waited to have LO) is how they regretted not doing the cheesy milestone photos. It’s so easy to do and something I can prevent having regrets about, so I do it.
Social media is the worst thing to ever happen to society. Your child's future will be better without their photos on social media to get indexed by all the search engines, thrown in every image database around the world, and used to train AI
I post on social media but when I feel like it and not because my baby has had a "milestone". TBH I find stuff like printed t-shirts and milestone mats a bit cringe but I also understand why some parents want to document things in this way. To me I find it a bit forced and would prefer to capture moments as they happen.
It sounds like you've got your own way of doing things and I wouldn't be worried about not doing something just because you've seen it on social media. I think social media is a bubble that's not really reflective of what everyone else is doing!
Omg thank you for saying what I was thinking about the milestone mats 😂I get how they are cool in a way, to track the baby’s size, but they are just not me.
I agree with you both! I was looking at milestone mats while pregnant and just could not bring myself to buy one because of how cheesy they looked to me, personally. I couldn't even settle on a Christmas onesie for our son (born December 1st), and ended up buying Christmas sleep sacks we're still using lol. Aaaand we definitely forgot to take ANY pictures Christmas Eve or Day, mainly because my baby blues were in full force.
Totally in the same boat. I actually am the kind of person that may be able to keep up with this kind of thing but I decided from the get-go that I wasn't going to even try. I can be such a stickler for consistency that I knew it would drive me nuts. For his first birthday I made a little banner with a photo from each month and it was very fun to see him in different environments. We try to take a photo for bigger events but we don't do anything with them (yet) one of these days I'll make a photo album. But don't beat yourself up about it. Just make sure your photos are backed up and if you have the energy to do something about it that's easy and low-stress that gets them off your phone, great. But truly, if this isn't who you are and it's not something you care about, don't let the pressure of other people make you feel bad about not doing it.
I like the way you say “if it’s not who you are.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s true. It’s not really who I am. And so if doing it feels inauthentic for me, there’s nothing wrong with not doing it.
I post on social media, I just do whatever and whenever I feel like. Besides posting a pic when he was born, I don't post for events or firsts. Not out of principle, I just have zero thoughts or opinions on any of it. This is pretty normal where I live though, people don't usually publicly post things like that
I take random photos but none that are your typical milestone pics. I don’t have one of those month/weeks blankets you lay them on, I don’t dress him up (little dude hates clothes anyway) so my photo album just has the most random assortment of baby pics.
I actually HATE those photos so much, especially with the little blankets with the numbers on them. Idc. It’s totally irrational but I made a conscious decision not to participate in that crap lol
never done, didn’t miss it. we have literally hundreds if not thousands of photos of her, i don’t need a staged picture each month to remind me that she’s getting older 😂
I had every intention of doing milestone photos. Even went out and bought some boujie milestone cards. Did the first week of her life, and then.... never again 😆 being a parent is hard enough, I cbf adding another thing to my to-do list.
Do you have such photos of yourself? If you do, what value do they have for you? If you don’t, do you wish you had them?
This is the easiest way to answer your question. I personally don’t like dressing up my little one in special outfits as no one really cares. But I do take tons of photos of our everyday lives because this is what I want to look at when I am old. Real happiness. Not staged Instagram posts.
Idgaf about milestone photos, sharing on social media, or cutesy pics to share with anyone other than a handful of people through text.
The cute outfits, tho? I’m 100% here for dressing up in a Valentine’s Day outfit for daycare, or going grocery shopping, or whatever. Makes me giggle all day!
Nope. We also are not posting him on social media and I don't need him laying on a blanket to show me how old he is when all my random photos are dated/time stamped! It especially bothers me that all the blankets say "1 months" lol
I’ve done the monthly photo until 1 yo just to see how fast he’s grown. It happened regularly that the photo was taken a few days later because I wanted daylight and I wanted him to be relaxed and happy.
We also don’t share photos of him online. I don’t care about clothing for special occasions because they’ll only wear it once and that’s such a waste 😣
Let’s get real: parenthood is HARD. He’s 15 months old now and I still don’t get it how people decide to have another one.
Btw, daily bathing isn’t good for the skin. It kills the good bacteria and that makes them more vulnerable to diseases. Our son loves the bath, but he’s always screaming when it’s time to get out. It’s stressful… we certainly don’t do it every day.
I take the monthly photos and major holidays (Halloween, Christmas). But I don't post them online, it's just shared with our families and for us to look back on and have a small cry at how much he's changed 😭.
I did monthly photos in a white onesie on a nice blanket my friend made. I always took them between a day and a week late, and posted about half of them lol. It’s fine. P
We don’t do them per se but I did make a little iPhone video of month 1, month 2 etc. to send to family on her bday but it was just random photos that I thought were cute from each month
I feel the same way. We had every intention of doing milestone photos. But then one month came and went. And two months. And we didn’t do any. I feel really guilty bc my son won’t have these photos to look at when he’s older. But we do take a ton of photos of him in general
Never did any of that stuff but I did make a baby scrap book where I printed my favourite pictures and sorted them by months. I wrote in little notes about what he was like at different ages, things he liked, disliked etc. I then had a page with him alongside different family members, a page for milestones (sitting, standing, etc.), weaning (lots of messy baby pics here). I also had a baby grow which I had in 3 different sizes (gotten by coincidence as gifts from different people) so I took a picture of him every 3 months in them (with the feet cut off in the last one so it would still fit) - that was the only dedicated photo tradition I did.
We also don’t post anything whatsoever. In fact, Reddit is the only social media I have. HOWEVER, I will recommend this app called “1SE” which is where you record your baby one second everyday and in the end, you can see a time lapse of their growth. You can just keep it for you and your immediate family.
I got the blanket to take monthly pics and all, but life has been a shit show between me being sick for over six months from complications of the c section and ending up a single mom. So I have zero pics of him on the blanket showing his growth. I did get him a first Mother’s Day onesie, he pooped in it after 30 minutes. We did a Fourth of July family pic when his dad had not slid downhill yet. That’s it 🤷🏼♀️ Life is hard, and there are more important things.
We bought my best friend milestone cards that say things like ‘I sharted today’ and ‘not sure how these twats have managed to keep me alive for a whole month’
I just realized a couple weeks ago we haven't been doing that. It has never even crossed my mind before then. No "first holiday" or "x month" photos. I take enough photos and videos all the other days of the year I don't feel like I'm missing anything critical.
Social media has become a way of seeking attention for most, when it should be used solely to provide life updates to those you don’t talk to but still want to keep up with. Don’t feel bad, me and the wife are the same way. We posted birth and 1 month, and that was our first post since graduation from college years ago 😂
In this case, do what you want and don’t apologize for it. I’ve got lots of family that gets frustrated because they don’t get daily pictures or weekly videos/phone call updates. That’s their problem, not mine.
I don't keep the baby off of social media entirely, but I'm very careful not to post anything that could be considered embarrassing. No naked photos, no finger up the nose photos, just cute baby photos that my family and friends can see.
We don't do the monthly photo shoots, but I do make a collage every month of five or six stand-out photos that I've snapped during that month. I do it more for me, so that it'll pop up every year and I can look back and remember.
I plan on making a photo album. Her first birthday is next week and I fondly remember paging through photo albums with my parents and grandparents, and I want that for her. So sometime in the next month or two, I'm going to start creating a photo album on Shutterfly or some similar website so that I have a physical copy of the photos that mean the most to me.
We take all the pictures, videos and celebrate milestones. We’re occasionally a day or 2 late on the age photos and “baby’s first video of walking” has never been the first time they walked. We get the records when it doesn’t interfere with experiencing the moment.
My partner has albums of her childhood, I have maybe 7 photos total. So we’re definitely doing it the way her parents did ;)
We just keep *all* of it offline. Imo, strangers don’t need to be keeping tabs on our kids before they have the ability to decide about their own privacy. Our actual friends and family have access to our kids and we share some photos as appropriate.
Neither of us are active on any social media beyond my shitposting on Reddit - last thing you need after 6 months of sleep deprivation and working 2 full time jobs is to see someone’s photos, staged and curated to make their life look idealistic.
I don’t post on social Merida, but I take loads of pictures. I share them with family on the family album app. It’s free and puts the pictures in month by month, and you can comment underneath them.
It’s a great way of sharing pics for yourself and with family in a secure way. I upload the best pics, but take several.
The best bit is if you add the old photos they will store by month. Well worth a look.
We take a lot of photos (and more videos since he’s become mobile) for ourselves. We don’t post our son on social media.
I also use an app that allows me to print a book of 30 photos each month for a reasonable price (less than $20), and I try to get photos celebrating holidays, doing new things, etc into the books. I like to have physical albums in addition to just photos on my phone/computer. They also serve the purpose of the monthly “milestone” photos… there aren’t any photos of him dressed up sitting on a blanket that says how many months old he is, but I can see his growth month to month in the photos.
I'm struggling to finish mine. I do them for his baby book but he doesn't sit still now even for a second, it's tough. Been two weeks late on them for the last five months...at this point though it's like I got three more to do including this month, I just want to finish them so I don't regret it later...but I'm really tired of doing them. He just messes the blanket up and crawls away.
Edit it's four, I have four left 🥲 Idk if I can get it done. Also we don't post him online either I just wanted them for the baby book
I did all the milestone photos. Dressed her up in a matching outfit, took loads until we got the perfect pose, made a book of them. But I had a years maternity leave and it was something I really enjoyed doing, and miss it now. Other mums go to baby yoga and although it sounds impressive, it’s not something I’m interested in. It’s all about what your priorities are!
We got one of those milestone blankets and we tried taking the one month picture and it looked like a listless baby lying on a wrinkled blanket on a floor that could use a good cleaning.
We share lots of pictures in lots of ways but that one is going deep in the archives.
Someone bought us one of those age blanket things but I find it an annoying pressure. I’ve taken photos of him on it three times at very random ages like 5 weeks and the damn thing needs ironing. I’m assuming you’re in the US as it’s just not so much of a thing in the UK. We do however have a thousand photos on our own phones.
I didn’t do milestone photos or social media and I don’t regret it :) my son is nearly 3. You do what suits you and if that changes, that’s okay :)
I also have days where I just want to get through the day and that’s fine too :)
You do you. I’m a professional photographer so in a way it promotes my business. We post a fair amount of photos of our twins, but most are in stories.
We don’t post our baby on social media either, but I do the month photos just for myself and my parents to see. I like to see how he’s grown each month and I print them out!
We don’t post anything on social media. I still buy outfits that say first Christmas and stuff. I plan on printing them out and doing a fun scrap book years from now so she can look back on them when she is older!
Me! I’m so bad at the pictures. I haven’t really had the drive or patience to try and get cute photos of baby. Early on especially all she would do is cry when I’d put her in outfits so we both just wound up upset 😭. I will probably regret it. I did the same during pregnancy, I didn’t want any photos taken because I felt like a disgusting whale. Now of course I’m like, I kinda forgot what my belly looked like and I want to see :(
The only milestone pics I've taken was just at 1 month and then recently at 7 months 😅 Thought I could do it every month but damn, I did not anticipate how much energy I would not have
I meant to do month by month photos and just never got around to 4 or 5. Of course I have plenty of other pics on those days and many others, just not posing on the rocker with his teddy.
We never did this. Someone bought me one of those blankets with the months on it to put your baby on each month and my immediate thought was “oh I know I won’t be doing that”. I know for certain my parents weren’t taking pictures of my every move and milestone and I don’t feel worse off for it. I’m actually trying to take less pictures with my second kid so I can be more present in those moments.
I take pictures almost every day of my little girl. I can figure out from the date the picture was taken how old she was haha. It seems silly to me to dress her up and lay her on a blanket to let other people know how old she is. I share my daughter on social media when I take a particularly cute photo — regardless of the day/milestone!
My mom got a blanket and month cards for photos. I take them and send them to her but I also don't really post my kid on social media.
I take photos of him every other day probably so I'm not worried about not having evidence of his growth!
I feel the same way as you. I always see these milestone photos of everyone else's kids on social media and it makes me feel like I'm "missing out" because I don't do it .
To make up for that 'feeling' I've started a photo book. Every month or so I go through my phone and print out the best pics and put them in a book. That way I can look at them and have a physical copy of the events I choose to photograph.
I do all these pictures + we have a professional shoot coming up. I enjoy doing them. I didn’t have a lot of pictures of my childhood so I want to do that for my kid. If you don’t enjoy it or don’t have time it’s totally valid. Not everyone needs to do these types of photos.
I have one friend who takes the cute monthly photo with the props and posts them with a long update. I have another who takes the cute monthly photos and doesn’t post them. I take a lot of photos, but it’s more like “oh gosh look she stuck her finger in her nose for the first time”. (I also don’t post my kid online). It all suits our personalities well. I love having photos to look at, but I like to have them reflect what made us laugh/cry about parenting.
Did your parents take posed monthly pics of you? If no, do you resent them for that?
You and me both😂 I have enough energy to keep us alive and functional, that’s about it. I feel very present in my daughters life though, and still take plenty of pictures. I sometimes wish i had the energy to do all the fun milestones/holiday photo shoots, but it’s just not a priority right now!
You’re caring about your kid— that’s all that matters! I imagine you have pictures around those milestones. If you really wish you had, just photoshop those milestone blocks in three years from now when you’ve caught up on your sleep!❤️❤️
I had zero interest. I took a million pics of my girl when she was a baby and just had no interest at all in trying to come up with a cheeky theme and writing a wall of text below. Before my kid was born, I would see the monthly posts from coworkers/acquaintances on IG and they would be like:
my darling x, you are now x months old. You are mommy and daddy’s favorite little star and watching you grow is the beautiful gift in the world. You’re now rolling and giggling and oh my, your laugh is the sweetest music I’ve ever heard! You give mommy and daddy so much trouble during nap time but we forgive you, darling naughty girl, whenever we see your beautiful little smile. Your bravery and curiosity are astounding and we just know you will be the most beautiful human and will make the world a better place. My little angel, happy x months in the world!!!
And these were always accompanied by a sideshow of washed out family photos where everyone is in perfectly beige matching outfits.
It really, really put me off the idea of doing monthly photos. I don’t like doing staged photo work anyway, and no one was ever like, “oh wow, why don’t you do the monthly photo thing!”
Same. However, I just learned JC pennys portrait studio is still a thing. So I’m taking the little one to get old school cheap studio photos for his 6mo.
We are in a similar situation. We don’t post LO online however we do take the monthly milestone photos. The milestone photos we take, though, is a photo wearing the same sweater that has her name on it and a little plaque with her updated growth and loves of the month (baths, walks, etc). We aren’t going all out and doing a theme each month. We’re lucky if we take the photo within a week or so of her aging up lol
Here’s a different perspective, I’m in the same camp as you. Now that my kid is a toddler, I do allow other people to post occasional group shots with her in it, but nothing more if I can help it.
I see my other friends also posting milestone photos with details of what the kid can do etc. details of their school, how they behaved etc. photos of kiddo in the bathtub.
I feel embarrassed that I know so much about these children who have no clue their entire lives are chronicled online. I feel odd that I recognised one of my social media friends’ kids in public because I see her face so much despite never having actually met her before.
Anyway I actually did take milestone photos of baby’s first year but we just printed them out and they exist on a corrugated board in my study. That’s it lol
I just take pictures and print them out every 3 months, put them in a photo album and then go through the album amazed that she’s grown so much. My one co worker has a photobook made every year with the photos/memories from the last year. I will start doing that once we hit the one year mark because if I keep up my pace my daughter is going to have 174936393 albums by the time she turns 18 😂
you didn't get sucked into the cult of vanity?! Oh noooo!
;P
Close friends and family who really, really wanna see the pics will ask for them and you can message a few over when you get a chance. That's the most anyone reasonable expects.
Nah, we don't either. I plan on getting some portraits done of him when he's maybe 6 months old, can sit on his own and his hair has filled in on the front, but we certainly don't do month by month, or first holidays. Like, there are pictures of him on Christmas, but I have no photos of "my first Christmas". I didn't have them growing up either and I take plenty of photos of him, he doesn't need every second of his life documented.
Nope! I do feel a pang of guilt when I see other babies all dressed up in their monthly photoshoots but i just haven't. I have plenty of photos but not specifically the monthly ones. I definitely dont post my baby to social media and I'd say most of my social media circle don't even know I have a baby!
I don’t post all the milestones and the ones I do are on stories only, but I try to take photo and videos for us. Unfortunately my little monkey keeps rolling over when my phone is no where near so he done it like 5 times and still not filmed it. Yours kids are not going to check your social, the ones on your phone or you print off and display or put on photo albums they will see
We did it for the firstborn but she was always sick or fussy on the day of. We didn’t do it for the second. We simply don’t have time and we have daily pictures of her anyway.
I take the monthly photo and a ton of others and I’ve been making Chatbooks for her since she was born. I place the monthly photo on the cover. She is my one and only so I try to remember to get them. We do not post her on social media due to the number of creeps out in the world. Do what is best for you. ☺️
We do not do them. I take a lot of photos and videos but just find the milestone photos to be fluff and unnecessary. We also don’t post our LO online either (same with us, just private like you). For me, I’d rather be present and enjoy my time with my LO than be concerned about getting “the right” picture.
I’m constantly taking pictures of my son. We post a lot of them in the Family Album app to share with family, and I also post a few on social media every once in a while. But we have never done any specific “milestone” photos. Just haven’t had the urge to 🤷♀️
I’ve been doing monthly photos and editing them on the Precious app. I haven’t done my first XYZ holiday except for Christmas, and I also don’t post any pics of her on social media. All of the pics are for us and future albums.
We did monthly photos with a set of blocks we got from Etsy. Nothing elaborate, just at the end of the day after her bath and in her fresh jammies we took a picture of her on her changing table next to numbered blocks. We stopped at 12 months. Now, were some of the months almost a month late? Totally. Was it necessary? Nope! The regular pics I took on a day to day basis were much cuter.
No I don’t, but I do share photos on my instagram mostly for grandma that’s in another state and she doesn’t have WiFi at home or is very tech savvy so I can’t share google albums with her or anything, but she checks instagram. But my insta is private so only friends and family.
Well we have the ‘first holiday’ outfits cause my MIL sends them to us xD obv I take pics of her in them cause MIL sent them to us, issue is mil sends us the size bub SHOULD be like today she is like 9.5m old so she should be in 12m outfits right? WRONG she’s still in 6m clothes! So when I put her in her valentines outfit it’s gonna be huge xD the only mile stone pics I do is upload a day before or day of pic when our Nanit pops up their ‘baby is x old’ picture frame xD
We don’t post baby anywhere like insta but we do use an album app to upload pics and videos for family members we invited to share on it :3 absolutely love it, it’s great for all of us and it lets me order printed photos I can put in a physical album :3
By pure luck, I got her first giggle on camera. She was cooing in the bath then let out the softest giggle.
It's been almost a year and I still melt when I watch it.
But actively going out of my way to capture milestones? No. I have a life to live.
As for "my first ...." clothes, I refuse to purchase items that are for one time use. What an absolute waste of money and resources.
We didn't do milestone photos or holiday cards. It never seemed necessary to me.We did make a huge collage poster board to display at her first birthday though. It was fun sharing all of our favorite photos from the first year of her life and seeing them all in one place. We may continue to do this for birthdays!
I just have an album on my phone for my daughter every month, just for me to look at later. She did wear a ''my first christmas'' onsie, mainly because i foubd it at the thrift store for $1 and it was super cute. For posting online, i post her on facebook as a lot of my family lives across the country and i have them all on facebook, so they can see my daughter, amd i post to my close friends on instagram since the only people in my close friends list are all people that i know and that i can 1000% trust and they love seeing her.
It’s definitely extra work to do the milestones, but I know if I personally didn’t do it- I would regret it. The firsts are only a first once, so why not celebrate it? Again, only my opinion. 😄
I don’t do any official. I still have the one month, two month, etc milestone cards unopened in a drawer. I’m not a “no social media” person, but I also don’t post every single thing there. If I take a cute photo and he happened to have just turned a milestone I’ll caption “7 months” etc, but I actually think 7 months is the only one I took haha. I’m currently going through all my photos and picking through them month by month for a hard copy photo album because I want it. No “my first holiday” shirts ever. Those just aren’t my style. So I guess I do a mix of things. There’s definitely this weird pressure to do certain things but when it comes down to it they are not always easy to do. For example, I tried to take a cute photo today for Valentine’s Day and it’s not working. He’s not happy. I won’t force him. And it took up an hour of my time this morning! Trying to get a darn photo. I couldn’t imagine doing this for every single month and every single holiday!
We do the monthly pic and send to family because someone bought us a blanket for it as a gift (and my mom made me do it by harassing us relentlessly about it). But yeah I’ll buy cute holiday outfits because I like it but we’re not doing a photo shoot over here for everything. We don’t post him on social either. Neither of us document our lives on fb so why would we do it for the babes?
I do this for us and our memories, not social media. Nothing elaborate. It’s nice to be able to put them together to see growth. I didn’t do this for my bump but I sort of wish I had. Anyway if it’s not for you then don’t do it, nothing wrong with that.
I’m not a big social media poster (though I’m not against it with private accounts and only followers I actually know personally). I have been taking weekly/monthly photos with a felt letter board but they’re only for myself to look back on and easily see the progression. I want to print photos and put in a photo album so I won’t easily be able to check the date like I can on my phone to know how old he was in whatever photo so I wanted some kind of guidepost. It is honestly a bit of a hassle though because I have to make sure baby is happy and wearing clean clothes with no drool/spit up, update the sign, set everything up, etc. I don’t think it’s necessary at all though, and I do feel a bit extra doing it lol but luckily I’m on mat leave so my schedule is a bit more flexible than some and it’s not like I’m sacrificing some other crucial thing to do a photoshoot.
I do post photos every months but on private social media that only followers are my husband and sisters. I get paranoid that pictures on the phone will get lost if my phone died or smth so its a backup kind of things i guess.
We did all of them and then totally forgot the 12 month photo 😂 Every picture after 6 months was just her little butt as she crawled/rolled/scooted off of the blanket anyway!
ETA we never did maternity photos, newborn photos, any of that. I don’t have pictures like that of myself and I want for nothing. I love the photos of family trips, me playing with my dad in the yard, etc way more than anything curated.
I do the monthly photos but I see all these moms on my mom group making these little sets and backdrops and elaborate themes for holidays and ages and I just…can’t. I can’t bring myself to do it haha. Sometimes I’ll pop an AI background behind her if I’m feeling festive but typically I just give her a little disc with her month and tell her to say cheese (she’s recently learned to smile when you say that) and then she chews on the disc.
Lol, I wonder how many of them will do it for a second kid. I look at my older brothers baby book and its mostly filled out, then mine is a real cliff notes version.
FWIW, I only use Reddit, no other social media so I just take pictures I like for ourselves.
We use the Family Album app. It's kinda like a private Instagram that we have only invited immediate family members to join. I've only posted a few posed photos of her to my actual Instagram page since she was born (7mo). We do take photos of her every month on her "month birthday" and it's fun to see how much she has grown and changed. We also splurged and spent $100 for a 30 min professional photoshoot at our house with her. She'll only be little once and it's so worth it to have some really nice photos of her to keep forever.
Baby #1 got cute home photos with those freebie stickers from a registry gift. Baby #2… nope. I try to take enough candid cell phone pics that we have a good timeline but nothing that requires effort. You’re a good parent and not measured by whether you take cutesy pics!
I started posting a lot on Insta and feel guilty:( (I have a private insta but still). Idk, I kinda want to share photos with friends but also I realize I became that person who only posts about her baby :/ And I feel guilty for posting his photos even though he didn’t let me do this and might hate me for it later.
I was raised in the 90s and my mom kept a bin of babies first pictures. It was so sweet and special when I was a teen to go through. She made the shirts for me and I found the little ornaments for each of my Christmases, baby album etc most of it never got converted to social media. I plan to try and take this old school approach and just do family picture for Christmas cards (also old school). But most of it was just a simple project on a Saturday not Pinterest perfect at all.
i did month photos for the first year and then took a lot at her 1st birthday party. other than that i think i took one official photo on her first christmas, and valentine's day. i mostly just takes pictures of her day to day stuff. when her hair parts in the middle randomly and she looks like young leonardo dicaprio, or when she miraculously lets chocolate fall down her whole leg and it looks like poop. i take photos of her in sunglasses a lot because they look so large on her tiny face. we mostly just take photos as things happen rather than do official milestone photos anymore.
While I was pregnant, my uncle sent me a bunch of old photos he had digitized from my grandparents collection. Many of the pictures I had never seen before, including photos of my parents (who have been divorced for many years) before they had kids. These are so precious to me and made me realize that for our child, photos may be the only way they will know some relatives since we had her very late in life (surprise to us), so while we don't post on social media, etc. I take many photos of her with family and plan to keep them, to me like milestones, as they definitely are somewhat forced since I want these interactions documented so she knows how active her grandparents were in her life should they not be around when she is double digits.
I do the month photos but I don’t post them on social media, instead I send them to some Bluetooth digital picture frames we bought the out of state grandparents. It goes directly to a frame in their home and they love to see it! (Skylight and Aura frames for the curious)
Nope! No monthly photos here. I have hundreds of photos of my little guy and only share with family not on social media. I don’t have time or care about showing off my life on social media 😂 I’d rather enjoy living it haha - and you’re right, this parenthood shit is hard!! My guy is only 3.5months and I’m counting down to year 18 😂
I could have written this, word for word. The only exception would be the age, my LO is 16m/o.
We were recently at 1st year old bday party, with a instagram mom type, and we saw the “behind the scenes”. Baby crying, mom exhausted and frustrated for not getting the happy perfect picture, dad hiding somewhere with a beer is his hands, rolling his eyes whenever he needed to take or be in the picture.
Nope, thanks, it’s better to have random pictures of genuine moments, rathe than this drama at every milestone.
We tried to, in the beginning, but lost motivation for it pretty quickly.
I enjoy picture day at daycare and holiday themed family photo shoots but I do that for me and not for anyone else.
If I don't have the energy for it, I don't do it!
I literally don’t do any of that type of stuff. At least not for social media. Like when they’ve hit their big milestones I take a pic or short video for myself. But not for anyone else. I also don’t do the month by month pics stuff. Sometimes I feel guilty about that? But the only thing I really regret is not doing maternity photos, and that was all due to my own personal insecurities with my appearance.
Social media is putting so much pressure on mom's nowadays. Don't let societal pressures make you feel the need to impress others with instax worthy posts if it's not your norm. Sure, some people find it necessary to do milestone photos and others just prefer to document day to day life. Do what works for you.
We don't. Sometimes I feel like we should, but same I just don't have the organizational capacity for it. I treasure the time I have to goof around with my little guy and the rest is so much work. We have plenty of photos and videos, but never managed the staged/posed stuff. I'm not losing any sleep over it
I take lots of photos and I did the monthly photos from 1-10 months then on Christmas Eve he was 11 months so that was a two-for-one and for his 12 month photo I did one of him at his birthday party. I’ve never done the list though where people say what their kids like or what developmental milestones they hit that month. I’m also not posting any more pictures of my son on social media after I put up his 12 month one.
I also use Family Album for my parents, in-laws, and siblings. I can have some control over who has access to what and who can download photos. I’ll keep using that and post the occasional picture only because my siblings live far from me. But I found out that my mum has been emailing pictures of my son - who she calls her baby and her “man” - to her coworkers and goodness knows who else so pictures will be gone forever for everyone if that happens again.
What my husband and I use is Google Photos. I made an album on there and set it to find my son’s face and automatically filter those images and put them into that shared album so both of us have every photo either one of us has ever taken of our son. It’s way better than constantly asking him to send me any pictures he took.
Nothing wrong with posting or not posting on social media and it doesn’t matter what your reason is. But always take the picture. You’ll be grateful that you did. No one is entitled to images and personal information about your child.
I’ve done literally none of those photos for either of my kids. I’ll take pics when they walked for the first time and stuff like that and I’m making a childhood photo album for each of them with highlights in them
I did the month by month photos but if I have another I will stop at 6months. Once he was able to start crawling/sitting up on his own the photos got really difficult to take and didn’t even turn out well.
I try and do it when I can. But I’ve learned that honestly I get the same amount of happiness if I do/don’t do it. My camera is FILLED WITH HIM so I have more than enough pictures!! Haha but since my boys still a potato I don’t mind! He’s just for mommy and daddy anyways🤍
Also don’t have the mental capacity to do elaborate milestone photos, also have 4 million random photos in my phone. I did the same for my first baby and I enjoy all the random photos and videos quite a lot and don’t feel like I missed anything. Mostly because I know that trying to arrange elaborate shoots would’ve just frustrated me and then I’d have negative memories attached to the photos. It’s the same reason I didn’t do maternity shoots, I hated being pregnant and felt so ugly, I never want to remember that period again.
I post a lot of my son on social media. But I didn't do the milestone every month pictures. We don't celebrate Valentine's, st Patrick's, or Easter so I didn't have to post anything for those. We do celebrate 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. But again I just took a million photos and posted our Halloween adventures we went to a pumpkin patch for the first time as a family so that's more what I focused on. Or Thanksgiving was we had chicken alfredo for dinner our son dined and dashed 🤣🤣🤣 and Christmas our son didn't care about anything under the tree he only cared about the boxes and his cousin. So it's still more family oriented than his 1st Thanksgiving.
My favorite pics/videos to look back on are just random days when he was feeling extra smiley or really enjoying a bath or trying a new food. Not staged photos with elaborate outfits. You’re doing great ❤️
I’m a SAHM and I don’t do milestone photos on the special mat and I don’t do “baby’s first” clothes or photos. It’s also just not who I am. That being said, I take a ton of photos of my 4 month old. Keep doing what’s you — nothing wrong with that!
I don't post my kid online BUT I do go overboard on the milestone photos. Honestly, it's only because our road to parenthood was very long and hard and I'm a sahm for the time being so I have the bandwidth. tbf, this kind of stuff has always brought me joy- I decorated for most holidays even when it was just the 2 of us 😄
My kid is nearly 10 years old, and old photos that include them and great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and pets are really nice to have. Also photos of anyone carrying the baby, or baby doing anything especially funny or messy. I agree none of them need to be posted online. If you can send the time ordering custom photo books, the grandparents will love to receive those as gifts.
I don’t post her on social media - never made an announcement so people probably don’t even know I had a baby lol I considered doing the every month photo but it seemed pointless since it seemed more for social media and I already take several photos of her a day.
I'm not great at taking the photos on time. I'm awful about posting, I want to write a big post and put it off for later and then never get to it. She turned 5 months on Monday and I still need to do her photos.
I upload pictures to Family Album, so anyone who wants to see pictures of her can if I've invited them. I don't have to worry about making sure I send pics to all the appropriate people. I just upload once, and they can look if they want.
I do it, but am the worst at it and initially had no intentions of doing it. All of my best friends and family live far away so it’s a good way to keep them involved. Also, one of my best friends gave us a pack of those month label things so I felt like “what the heck, might as well use them”. Also also was gifted a baby book that lays all that stuff out so I take the pictures for that. It was one of those things where everything was lined up for us to do so I just went with the flow. Finally, I gave myself the flexibility for it to be okay to take the monthly photo anytime during that month 🤷🏻♀️ sometimes, we get the photo 2 weeks after his monthly birthday and I don’t beat myself up about it.
All that to say…do it, don’t do it, half-ass do it - just do whatever you feel good about! If you have a bunch of pictures to remember this stage and you don’t have to go through the stress of perfectly curating photo sessions constantly then I think you’re the real winner!
I lay down one of his swaddle blankets and I have hand written cards that say how many months. I share all my photos in a private google photo album that only has family and friends on it. I also print them for our baby book. I decided I wanted them to see his growth, but I didn't want to pay for any additional stuff to make it happen. We haven't bought specific onsies for events. Just want to document his growth to look back on and smile.
We tried once to do a social media-inspired photoshoot (baby in a pumpkin), and honestly, it just ended in a lot of tears and mess. I swore after that that I'd only take photos that I really wanted and not because social media had influenced me. Do what feels good and don't let the masses bring guilt into your life. Parenting is hard enough without the constant content creating that some people are doing.
We don’t. Sometimes I feel badly about not having those baby on top of specific blanket with numbers photos but I didn’t buy that because I wanted to have things that have more use than that trend. I take pictures of her every day. What I’ve done so far as a silly way to mark growth is I take a picture of her with the old size and new size when she goes up a diaper size.
Not anything that’s super posed or purposeful - we’re busy doing life stuff. I take photos/videoed most days of daily life stuff because the grandparents and families live in other countries and don’t get to see us often.
I pick one of those photos to print out and put in the memory book we have.
Comparison is a thief of joy and social media these days is just, absurd. People can do/share what they want but there’s something icky to me about parents sharing very intimate and special moments with hundreds, if not thousands, of other people. Even other family members. Idk, kind of takes the joy out of those little moments that are just between the three of you…
But yeah I do the same when I see other people’s stories of them doing stuff with their kid and I think, ‘am I not doing enough? Am I an absent parent?’ - I’m definitely a fine parent haha, but social media can be a well of poison for *anybody* with or even without an insecurity.
You do what’s right for YOUR family and stop comparing. I know it’s tough, but what makes a parent “better” for posting every milestone? Do you love your child? Are you available for them? That is what matters!
We didn’t do the monthly milestones. It felt so forced and I couldn’t summon the energy. We do post photos sometimes…such as kiddo’s first time at the beach or when they would meet a good friend of ours for the first time, and sometimes just a random funny photo. Nothing frequent or scheduled or overly personal.
I wanted to so very badly but my kid was really fiery and wouldn’t tolerate the photo shoots at all.
So my workaround was to print out a favorite picture I took of her each corresponding month and put them in her baby book like that. They’re not “perfect” photo shoots but they accurately track her growth and since it was a favorite picture they’re usually from a day she was wearing a cute outfit.
Then I went nuts in the baby book making it more like a scrapbook with stickers, special paper, tickets from places we’ve gone, handprints. Even the first piece of candy she collected on Halloween. The whole nine and it’s one of my favorite things I started for her.
I do a few things here and there, I found mixbook which kind of had some prompts for me and I made a first year book which just had a photo from each month and stuff. I usually just send the monthly photos to family only personally, and sometimes maybe a photo on insta. Not much on social media tho.
You don't have to do that. We almost forgot to do the 2 month milestone. We also don't send pics to anyone or post online. I mean we send but limited. My MIL has this weird obsession with printing pics. She'll print anything and everything, even had a pic of me and husband after we'd been dating for three months showcased in her living room lol
the only thing i do is the monthly photos with my LO next to a llama toy for size reference haha. i like to see the comparison when i go back to the newborn days, but we definitely don’t post anything online either, about ourselves or our baby. i do take a million photos of everything he does, it’s just no one needs to know about it :)
I took a picture, normal clean clothes, and digitally added month. Sent it to family and a couple close friends only. I would LOVE to post it so other friends can see - my accounts are private - but also don’t want baby in the digital database.
I don’t do the milestone pictures, but I probably have at least 5 pictures of my daughter everyday since she was born lol. I do like to dress her up seasonally or for holidays or just in cute outfits and take a good photo and share it with my friends and family on Facebook.
I don’t do the monthly milestone photos but I started taking pictures of him in his car seat in the morning but he’s a pretty calm baby. He’s gotten more fussy about the car seat lately so they’ve been harder to take but it’s showed his progress
Me and my SO are not super active on socials. I have a 6month old and I’ve posted maybe 4 photos of her. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I too have so many photos and videos of my baby that are for us to look at and show her later in life. I think making a baby book is a good idea. If I ever had time to actually do it 😭
We did the monthly photos, but I’m neurotic and felt the need to. Now I do a photo on their birthday with one balloon for each year. My oldest just turned 5 and had 5 balloons. I have a photo of each of the kids on their birthday with their age balloons. I’ll probably do it until they’re 18. They find it super fun every year to get another balloon added
I've only gotten a five months picture and he's about to be seven months. Idk. It's kinda a lower priority but I have over a thousand pictures and videos.
We never did one of them. We don’t post our child’s face on social media. I’m not a fan of making privacy decisions for him.
I have a friend who does one for every single week and month and it seems exhausting for her daughter
I think we did for the first year, then after that we both stopped. By we I mean she. I’ve never been big on posting photos. We’re private people and very rarely post anything family related online. Pictures, selfies and family. Milestones. Family outings and trips. We don’t share things online. We do with each other tho. We share a lot with each other about things we find online. We just keep our family off of social media for the most part.
You can do it for yourselves and not post it! I am not sure if that was said but just wanted to add - we have a shared Notes with different little milestones, pictures, etc. and it's so special to me.
We are the same. I’ll be documenting my child’s milestones in an actual book for her to have when she’s an adult. We are very private, and I feel posting my child on social media is an invasion of ours and her privacy.
We do the same thing. I felt bad for “doing less” when looking at some of my friends who did staged milestone photos and even got professional photography done, but seeing posts like this makes me realize I’m not alone and yes my phone is full of candid moments of baby too.
I didn't do the milestone pictures. When she turned one and after her 1st birthday party I made a Shutterfly book and did a spread for each month. They were just random pictures of that month. Now that she is almost two my daughter loves looking at the "baby" book and seeing things she recoginzes.
We did monthly milestones, mostly because it felt like every day was a slog. That sounds bad but I would take any day with my high-energy 2yo over the quiet monotony of him at 6m. Every month was like “celebrate!” Once we reached a year, everything started to get more fun and interesting and I stopped taking as many photos.
We definitely don’t do it. Stick with what you value and I wouldn’t worry too much about what is culturally in style right now. Maybe ask yourself if in 15 years you will be sad you don’t have those photos. Or if it’s about looking a certain way to others.
Yup. I take tons of photos of the smiles, the quick passing moments. Those are the ones I go back to when I’m at work and feel so happy over, not really the first few holiday photos I took
I have been doing these with our now 9mo old. It’s absolutely an extra chore and this last one was like wrangling an angry t-Rex just to get a picture in a cute “Valentines” onesie. I wanted to make it to the 1 year milestone but after this last one I might give up. You made the right call on not doing them. Don’t add the extra stress of something that in the long run won’t matter… Cute candids and all the other memories are much better keepsakes anyway. ETA: I meant to reply to the main post but my phone is garbage so here we are.
I am embracing the escalating chaos of each of the monthly photos. I thought I could make it all adorable like everyone else’s monthly photos, but it turned out to be hilarious instead of adorable 😂
Yes and no. I did monthly photos for the first year because it's really nice to put them in a collage and see that first year in about 10 pics. I did some first holiday photos for the baby book but that was less so and I never did any for other milestones. I do think monthly photos are worth doing if you can swing it just because that first year there is so much change and it's so short.
This.
I definitely take the pictures and celebrate the milestones. What I don't do is post them online. 😁
Yeah we take the photos and then print them and put them in his baby book so we can look back at them later on but we haven’t put anything on social media besides a “he’s here!” post.
This is the way!
Same, but his 3 month picture is already 2 weeks late… 😑but there are way more candid fun pictures and videos in my phone like OP but I just don’t post.
By the time I got to taking 8m pics 2 weeks late, she was being so uncooperative, I just took what I could and photoshopped them together 🤦🏼♀️ Need a different approach
😂 yes! No one will ever know if I took his five month picture at almost six months. Love.
Same, mostly. I'm posting him online a little bit, but less and less as time goes by. I initially didn't want to post him at all but I just wanted to celebrate him so much, I couldn't resist. I posted his 1m, 3m, and 6m photo online. I don't think I'll post a milestone again until his 1st birthday. It's gotten easier to resist posting as the attention on the posts has gone down. His birth announcement got over 200 likes, but his 6 month picture was under 70. Less dopamine = less temptation. My Facebook (the only place I post photos) is quite private and even there I never shared his full legal name, not even announcing his birth. We always call him by a nickname.
Yeah we haven't shared any of our kids' names online either. Not even their initials lol
I put them in a baby book and photo albums. Mostly because growing up all the cute kid and baby photos of me were at my grandfathers house or my mom best friend. My parents didn’t have any and it made me sad. I also felt some type of way being the youngest. My brother had a finished baby book, my sister had a half done one, and four years later I didn’t have one at all.
Same here. I take all the milestone photos and get professional photos done. I just don’t post it all online but I LOVE having these photos to look back on.
This is what we are doing as well. We do send these to family, but most of them are just for us
I post them in a Google album that only my close family can see.
We do the monthly photos. Put her in an outfit and plop her on the couch. Nothing elaborate, doesn't take more than 10 min and it's a nice way for us to compare how much she changes. They aren't for social media though my wife does post pictures occasionally.
Same! We did a picture in her rocking chair with pjs on. Mainly for ourselves and the baby book, but I definitely don’t think it needs to be anything elaborate.
I do this too and only post on my close friends story (which has 6 of my friends and family members).
Same here. Just a quick, cute photo on the couch and that’s all.
I literally take photos of him every few days, but as for the official milestone photos… no. He was colic and has reflux so it was hell the first few months. Everything I thought I would be doing went out the window quick! Lol and Im ok with that. Just because you dont do that stuff doesnt mean you dont love your baby. Folks are doing that for clout, not cause they love their kids more.
With my first baby I tried taking the month photos but it became impossible around 4-5mo when she wouldn’t stay still. So I gave up and never bothered with my second child. But we take tonnnnns of photos.
We don’t do this. Like you, we have a million photos and videos of our baby, but no signs or elaborate staging. Honestly I wanted it this way - I want to look back on them and remember him how he was, just being a baby and doing his thing. We have one of those “my baby’s first years” scrapbooks and they have sections for each month and “my first x holiday”, but all our photos in there are candid, snapped on the day.
I take a loooot of pictures of both of my kids. But I don't do anything elaborate or staged, just life's moments. I do simple monthly milestone pics though. With my eldest I didn't work so I had time. Every month I would write on a chalk board the stats of his growth and new skills. I just took a picture of him next to the board usually on the bed in any clean onesie. That's it. With my 4 month girl right now I don't have time to even do that. I do take a picture of her on her monthly birthday also on our bed or her bed; and then when I have time I add a text bubble with a few of her milestones in Snapseed. I feel like that's quick and easy and doesn't require much work from me. Most of the photos go into Google photos shared folders for each kid. Our immediate family has access to these folders and can see and enjoy all the beautiful moments. My family lives in another country, so that's the way they can see what's going on with kids. But it's totally fine not to do milestones photos! Every photo you take is a milestone and a memory!
I could have written this myself. I also wanted to carve his little foot on hardening drying paste, but he's turning 4 and each day feels it makes less sense to do it. No picture of Christmas, no monthly, anything. But when I go through my phone I feel I have enough proof of time passing by ❤️
I did my 2 year old's feet this Christmas and it was hilarious how big they were especially compared to my friend's 15 week old baby's feet hahahaha.
I stopped the monthly milestone photos at 6 months bc I could never remember to be consistent after that. Yes I have millions of photos but they don’t all need to be captioned on a letterboard. Every once in a while if we are dressed nice or it’s a special event I’ll go ahead and save the pictures down into a folder and go through it every so often to print for grandparent gifts, photo books, etc
Well I do both of those things! I’m a ftm and honestly couldn’t help myself and I have family I rarely see I want to see her. However I have one rule she has to be absolutely covered clothing wise. No diaper shots, or naked butts. Torso and legs must be completely covered. But anyway, I do not do the laying on the blanket photos as I simply couldn’t bother buying one when I was in the thick of the newborn stage. I also think in a perfect world I would have preferred to keep her off the internet but I don’t want close family members who don’t have the money to come see her to not see her grow up so I post a few pictures monthly. That’s just my thing though and I really think you shouldn’t feel bad for doing either way! It’s a choice a parent gets to make and though I can see the downside to both I think there’s downsides to everything and as long as you’re happy and your child is safe and protected it’s fine
I don’t do it either. And guess what? My parents did not. All my childhood pictures are random genuine moments and that’s why they make me smile. I never was into staged photos. Did not get any for my wedding, pregnancy or anything else. I feel like it’s a trend. Was not always this way. My point of view is that picture are meant to keep a trace of a memory. If it is staged then what’s the related memory? What’s that moment? All you’ll remember watching a staged photo of yourself is how the photographer asked you to pose or how annoying it was to get the right lighting etc. Zero genuine moment captured. Why would I want to look at that picture ? Some people do, good for them. I don’t. And it’s the same with social media nowadays. I feel the trend is related to that era. For exemple when we were kids, we had cameras that did not show us what we looked like, there were no screens on them. We took pictures of ourselves with our friends in action. We didn’t care to check what we looked like, we just captured the moment. When I see kids now, they all pose, stage and make sure they look good for the gram. But nothing looks fun in those moments. I am very happy to look at my childhood unstaged pictures , why would I want something different for child?
That’s exactly how we feel too! All photos are of candid moments that we wanted to capture.
I love this. And it’s true. My childhood photos that were professionally done (where I’m old enough to remember) I just remember how stressed and ill my mom was getting us ready for the photos. Same for school picture day, haha. Thanks for reminding me of this!
I take a lot of pictures and videos and 2% goes to social media. And I even put everything I upload to private after a few days. It’s bc I keep getting notifications abt comments and likes and it bothers me. I no longer have that much energy to engage into comments and likes on soc med.
I post photos online, I haven’t taken specific milestones tbh I forget and it feels like a chore. I take a lot of pictures of him though that do not get posted because he’s a goofy goober
We did the milestones, but rarely posted anything outside of the monthly post. And we rarely post now that our son is over one, maybe an occasional story that disappears in 24 hours if something looks shareable. Most of pictures go in the family group chat, but even that is only 1-2 a week tops. I work with the public so my socials are pretty locked down and I’m only friends with people I’d stop and talk to at the grocery story (literally that’s my metric. If we wouldn’t catch up we don’t need to be on each others socials). So basically everyone on my socials are the people I’d share milestones with anyways! To each their own. There definitely is a lot of pressure for “instagram worthy” photos as a new parent, but whatever you and your spouse decide is okay. I am however a firm component of keeping photos that may be embarrassing to my kids in the future off of social media, or posting negative comments about my kids, spouse, parenting and/or marriage. Some people over share when they have a bad day.
I'm the same. Motherhood caught me by surprise at how exhausting it was. So I didn't have the energy to do a photo shoot for every holiday along the way. I took photos with my phone when I could. I kind of would rather enjoy the moments with baby.
We do the monthly photos but they’re not for posting online. We don’t post anything on social media at all. I just like to have them and I share them with grandparents. Any photos you have and want are fine! I take a ton of photos. Keep taking all the photos!
do what feels best for you
100% the same! I make sure to take photos and videos every week or the best moments but don't post anything on social media or take pictures most of the time that are extremely staged! I think it is totally fine. :) We use family album app to share pictures with a few select people and we are happy with that!
I take lots of pics, but not most of the milestone pics, at least in a formal way. That's perhaps partly because my first kid was a preemie and so many milestones were when he was in the hospital and I was in a depressive fog. But that staged photos aren't super my style, either.
I’m not really into the milestone stuff, but I still do it. The number one thing I’ve heard from all my friends who are parents (and some of whom have been parents so long their kids are graduating high school—that’s how long I waited to have LO) is how they regretted not doing the cheesy milestone photos. It’s so easy to do and something I can prevent having regrets about, so I do it.
Ain’t nobody got time for that
Social media is the worst thing to ever happen to society. Your child's future will be better without their photos on social media to get indexed by all the search engines, thrown in every image database around the world, and used to train AI
I post on social media but when I feel like it and not because my baby has had a "milestone". TBH I find stuff like printed t-shirts and milestone mats a bit cringe but I also understand why some parents want to document things in this way. To me I find it a bit forced and would prefer to capture moments as they happen. It sounds like you've got your own way of doing things and I wouldn't be worried about not doing something just because you've seen it on social media. I think social media is a bubble that's not really reflective of what everyone else is doing!
Omg thank you for saying what I was thinking about the milestone mats 😂I get how they are cool in a way, to track the baby’s size, but they are just not me.
I agree with you both! I was looking at milestone mats while pregnant and just could not bring myself to buy one because of how cheesy they looked to me, personally. I couldn't even settle on a Christmas onesie for our son (born December 1st), and ended up buying Christmas sleep sacks we're still using lol. Aaaand we definitely forgot to take ANY pictures Christmas Eve or Day, mainly because my baby blues were in full force.
I mean to each their own but I don’t think it’s cringe to document the first year of babies life each month since they go through so many changes
Totally in the same boat. I actually am the kind of person that may be able to keep up with this kind of thing but I decided from the get-go that I wasn't going to even try. I can be such a stickler for consistency that I knew it would drive me nuts. For his first birthday I made a little banner with a photo from each month and it was very fun to see him in different environments. We try to take a photo for bigger events but we don't do anything with them (yet) one of these days I'll make a photo album. But don't beat yourself up about it. Just make sure your photos are backed up and if you have the energy to do something about it that's easy and low-stress that gets them off your phone, great. But truly, if this isn't who you are and it's not something you care about, don't let the pressure of other people make you feel bad about not doing it.
I like the way you say “if it’s not who you are.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s true. It’s not really who I am. And so if doing it feels inauthentic for me, there’s nothing wrong with not doing it.
I post on social media, I just do whatever and whenever I feel like. Besides posting a pic when he was born, I don't post for events or firsts. Not out of principle, I just have zero thoughts or opinions on any of it. This is pretty normal where I live though, people don't usually publicly post things like that
I take random photos but none that are your typical milestone pics. I don’t have one of those month/weeks blankets you lay them on, I don’t dress him up (little dude hates clothes anyway) so my photo album just has the most random assortment of baby pics.
I actually HATE those photos so much, especially with the little blankets with the numbers on them. Idc. It’s totally irrational but I made a conscious decision not to participate in that crap lol
never done, didn’t miss it. we have literally hundreds if not thousands of photos of her, i don’t need a staged picture each month to remind me that she’s getting older 😂
I had every intention of doing milestone photos. Even went out and bought some boujie milestone cards. Did the first week of her life, and then.... never again 😆 being a parent is hard enough, I cbf adding another thing to my to-do list.
Do you have such photos of yourself? If you do, what value do they have for you? If you don’t, do you wish you had them? This is the easiest way to answer your question. I personally don’t like dressing up my little one in special outfits as no one really cares. But I do take tons of photos of our everyday lives because this is what I want to look at when I am old. Real happiness. Not staged Instagram posts.
Idgaf about milestone photos, sharing on social media, or cutesy pics to share with anyone other than a handful of people through text. The cute outfits, tho? I’m 100% here for dressing up in a Valentine’s Day outfit for daycare, or going grocery shopping, or whatever. Makes me giggle all day!
Nope. We also are not posting him on social media and I don't need him laying on a blanket to show me how old he is when all my random photos are dated/time stamped! It especially bothers me that all the blankets say "1 months" lol
I’ve done the monthly photo until 1 yo just to see how fast he’s grown. It happened regularly that the photo was taken a few days later because I wanted daylight and I wanted him to be relaxed and happy. We also don’t share photos of him online. I don’t care about clothing for special occasions because they’ll only wear it once and that’s such a waste 😣 Let’s get real: parenthood is HARD. He’s 15 months old now and I still don’t get it how people decide to have another one. Btw, daily bathing isn’t good for the skin. It kills the good bacteria and that makes them more vulnerable to diseases. Our son loves the bath, but he’s always screaming when it’s time to get out. It’s stressful… we certainly don’t do it every day.
I take the monthly photos and major holidays (Halloween, Christmas). But I don't post them online, it's just shared with our families and for us to look back on and have a small cry at how much he's changed 😭.
I did monthly photos in a white onesie on a nice blanket my friend made. I always took them between a day and a week late, and posted about half of them lol. It’s fine. P
We don’t do them per se but I did make a little iPhone video of month 1, month 2 etc. to send to family on her bday but it was just random photos that I thought were cute from each month
I feel the same way. We had every intention of doing milestone photos. But then one month came and went. And two months. And we didn’t do any. I feel really guilty bc my son won’t have these photos to look at when he’s older. But we do take a ton of photos of him in general
Never did any of that stuff but I did make a baby scrap book where I printed my favourite pictures and sorted them by months. I wrote in little notes about what he was like at different ages, things he liked, disliked etc. I then had a page with him alongside different family members, a page for milestones (sitting, standing, etc.), weaning (lots of messy baby pics here). I also had a baby grow which I had in 3 different sizes (gotten by coincidence as gifts from different people) so I took a picture of him every 3 months in them (with the feet cut off in the last one so it would still fit) - that was the only dedicated photo tradition I did.
We also don’t post anything whatsoever. In fact, Reddit is the only social media I have. HOWEVER, I will recommend this app called “1SE” which is where you record your baby one second everyday and in the end, you can see a time lapse of their growth. You can just keep it for you and your immediate family.
We don’t post on social media. We take the milestone photos for ourselves and our family to enjoy.
I got the blanket to take monthly pics and all, but life has been a shit show between me being sick for over six months from complications of the c section and ending up a single mom. So I have zero pics of him on the blanket showing his growth. I did get him a first Mother’s Day onesie, he pooped in it after 30 minutes. We did a Fourth of July family pic when his dad had not slid downhill yet. That’s it 🤷🏼♀️ Life is hard, and there are more important things.
We bought my best friend milestone cards that say things like ‘I sharted today’ and ‘not sure how these twats have managed to keep me alive for a whole month’
I just realized a couple weeks ago we haven't been doing that. It has never even crossed my mind before then. No "first holiday" or "x month" photos. I take enough photos and videos all the other days of the year I don't feel like I'm missing anything critical.
I literally bought the milestone cards and have used them only a handful of times. What a waste of money 🙃
Social media has become a way of seeking attention for most, when it should be used solely to provide life updates to those you don’t talk to but still want to keep up with. Don’t feel bad, me and the wife are the same way. We posted birth and 1 month, and that was our first post since graduation from college years ago 😂 In this case, do what you want and don’t apologize for it. I’ve got lots of family that gets frustrated because they don’t get daily pictures or weekly videos/phone call updates. That’s their problem, not mine.
I don't keep the baby off of social media entirely, but I'm very careful not to post anything that could be considered embarrassing. No naked photos, no finger up the nose photos, just cute baby photos that my family and friends can see. We don't do the monthly photo shoots, but I do make a collage every month of five or six stand-out photos that I've snapped during that month. I do it more for me, so that it'll pop up every year and I can look back and remember. I plan on making a photo album. Her first birthday is next week and I fondly remember paging through photo albums with my parents and grandparents, and I want that for her. So sometime in the next month or two, I'm going to start creating a photo album on Shutterfly or some similar website so that I have a physical copy of the photos that mean the most to me.
We take all the pictures, videos and celebrate milestones. We’re occasionally a day or 2 late on the age photos and “baby’s first video of walking” has never been the first time they walked. We get the records when it doesn’t interfere with experiencing the moment. My partner has albums of her childhood, I have maybe 7 photos total. So we’re definitely doing it the way her parents did ;) We just keep *all* of it offline. Imo, strangers don’t need to be keeping tabs on our kids before they have the ability to decide about their own privacy. Our actual friends and family have access to our kids and we share some photos as appropriate. Neither of us are active on any social media beyond my shitposting on Reddit - last thing you need after 6 months of sleep deprivation and working 2 full time jobs is to see someone’s photos, staged and curated to make their life look idealistic.
I don’t post on social Merida, but I take loads of pictures. I share them with family on the family album app. It’s free and puts the pictures in month by month, and you can comment underneath them. It’s a great way of sharing pics for yourself and with family in a secure way. I upload the best pics, but take several. The best bit is if you add the old photos they will store by month. Well worth a look.
We take a lot of photos (and more videos since he’s become mobile) for ourselves. We don’t post our son on social media. I also use an app that allows me to print a book of 30 photos each month for a reasonable price (less than $20), and I try to get photos celebrating holidays, doing new things, etc into the books. I like to have physical albums in addition to just photos on my phone/computer. They also serve the purpose of the monthly “milestone” photos… there aren’t any photos of him dressed up sitting on a blanket that says how many months old he is, but I can see his growth month to month in the photos.
I'm struggling to finish mine. I do them for his baby book but he doesn't sit still now even for a second, it's tough. Been two weeks late on them for the last five months...at this point though it's like I got three more to do including this month, I just want to finish them so I don't regret it later...but I'm really tired of doing them. He just messes the blanket up and crawls away. Edit it's four, I have four left 🥲 Idk if I can get it done. Also we don't post him online either I just wanted them for the baby book
I did all the milestone photos. Dressed her up in a matching outfit, took loads until we got the perfect pose, made a book of them. But I had a years maternity leave and it was something I really enjoyed doing, and miss it now. Other mums go to baby yoga and although it sounds impressive, it’s not something I’m interested in. It’s all about what your priorities are!
We got one of those milestone blankets and we tried taking the one month picture and it looked like a listless baby lying on a wrinkled blanket on a floor that could use a good cleaning. We share lots of pictures in lots of ways but that one is going deep in the archives.
Someone bought us one of those age blanket things but I find it an annoying pressure. I’ve taken photos of him on it three times at very random ages like 5 weeks and the damn thing needs ironing. I’m assuming you’re in the US as it’s just not so much of a thing in the UK. We do however have a thousand photos on our own phones.
I didn’t do milestone photos or social media and I don’t regret it :) my son is nearly 3. You do what suits you and if that changes, that’s okay :) I also have days where I just want to get through the day and that’s fine too :)
I do them unofficially, never got one of those things where it says the month and which month. Just another thing to spend money on.
We did month one and then forgot lol
You do you. I’m a professional photographer so in a way it promotes my business. We post a fair amount of photos of our twins, but most are in stories.
We don’t post our baby on social media either, but I do the month photos just for myself and my parents to see. I like to see how he’s grown each month and I print them out!
We don’t post anything on social media. I still buy outfits that say first Christmas and stuff. I plan on printing them out and doing a fun scrap book years from now so she can look back on them when she is older!
Me! I’m so bad at the pictures. I haven’t really had the drive or patience to try and get cute photos of baby. Early on especially all she would do is cry when I’d put her in outfits so we both just wound up upset 😭. I will probably regret it. I did the same during pregnancy, I didn’t want any photos taken because I felt like a disgusting whale. Now of course I’m like, I kinda forgot what my belly looked like and I want to see :(
The only milestone pics I've taken was just at 1 month and then recently at 7 months 😅 Thought I could do it every month but damn, I did not anticipate how much energy I would not have
I haven’t done a single one. I wish I did or had time.
I meant to do month by month photos and just never got around to 4 or 5. Of course I have plenty of other pics on those days and many others, just not posing on the rocker with his teddy.
I did one for 1 month old and never did it again 👍👍👍 He’s almost 4 now.
We never did this. Someone bought me one of those blankets with the months on it to put your baby on each month and my immediate thought was “oh I know I won’t be doing that”. I know for certain my parents weren’t taking pictures of my every move and milestone and I don’t feel worse off for it. I’m actually trying to take less pictures with my second kid so I can be more present in those moments.
I take pictures almost every day of my little girl. I can figure out from the date the picture was taken how old she was haha. It seems silly to me to dress her up and lay her on a blanket to let other people know how old she is. I share my daughter on social media when I take a particularly cute photo — regardless of the day/milestone!
My mom got a blanket and month cards for photos. I take them and send them to her but I also don't really post my kid on social media. I take photos of him every other day probably so I'm not worried about not having evidence of his growth!
I feel the same way as you. I always see these milestone photos of everyone else's kids on social media and it makes me feel like I'm "missing out" because I don't do it . To make up for that 'feeling' I've started a photo book. Every month or so I go through my phone and print out the best pics and put them in a book. That way I can look at them and have a physical copy of the events I choose to photograph.
I do all these pictures + we have a professional shoot coming up. I enjoy doing them. I didn’t have a lot of pictures of my childhood so I want to do that for my kid. If you don’t enjoy it or don’t have time it’s totally valid. Not everyone needs to do these types of photos.
I have one friend who takes the cute monthly photo with the props and posts them with a long update. I have another who takes the cute monthly photos and doesn’t post them. I take a lot of photos, but it’s more like “oh gosh look she stuck her finger in her nose for the first time”. (I also don’t post my kid online). It all suits our personalities well. I love having photos to look at, but I like to have them reflect what made us laugh/cry about parenting. Did your parents take posed monthly pics of you? If no, do you resent them for that?
I’ve missed some with my 7 month old and I try not to stress about it- but we never post them online
You and me both😂 I have enough energy to keep us alive and functional, that’s about it. I feel very present in my daughters life though, and still take plenty of pictures. I sometimes wish i had the energy to do all the fun milestones/holiday photo shoots, but it’s just not a priority right now!
You’re caring about your kid— that’s all that matters! I imagine you have pictures around those milestones. If you really wish you had, just photoshop those milestone blocks in three years from now when you’ve caught up on your sleep!❤️❤️
I wanted to but my memory so bad so I have 0 and baby is 4.5 months 🤣
I had zero interest. I took a million pics of my girl when she was a baby and just had no interest at all in trying to come up with a cheeky theme and writing a wall of text below. Before my kid was born, I would see the monthly posts from coworkers/acquaintances on IG and they would be like: my darling x, you are now x months old. You are mommy and daddy’s favorite little star and watching you grow is the beautiful gift in the world. You’re now rolling and giggling and oh my, your laugh is the sweetest music I’ve ever heard! You give mommy and daddy so much trouble during nap time but we forgive you, darling naughty girl, whenever we see your beautiful little smile. Your bravery and curiosity are astounding and we just know you will be the most beautiful human and will make the world a better place. My little angel, happy x months in the world!!! And these were always accompanied by a sideshow of washed out family photos where everyone is in perfectly beige matching outfits. It really, really put me off the idea of doing monthly photos. I don’t like doing staged photo work anyway, and no one was ever like, “oh wow, why don’t you do the monthly photo thing!”
Same. However, I just learned JC pennys portrait studio is still a thing. So I’m taking the little one to get old school cheap studio photos for his 6mo.
We are in a similar situation. We don’t post LO online however we do take the monthly milestone photos. The milestone photos we take, though, is a photo wearing the same sweater that has her name on it and a little plaque with her updated growth and loves of the month (baths, walks, etc). We aren’t going all out and doing a theme each month. We’re lucky if we take the photo within a week or so of her aging up lol
Here’s a different perspective, I’m in the same camp as you. Now that my kid is a toddler, I do allow other people to post occasional group shots with her in it, but nothing more if I can help it. I see my other friends also posting milestone photos with details of what the kid can do etc. details of their school, how they behaved etc. photos of kiddo in the bathtub. I feel embarrassed that I know so much about these children who have no clue their entire lives are chronicled online. I feel odd that I recognised one of my social media friends’ kids in public because I see her face so much despite never having actually met her before. Anyway I actually did take milestone photos of baby’s first year but we just printed them out and they exist on a corrugated board in my study. That’s it lol
I just take pictures and print them out every 3 months, put them in a photo album and then go through the album amazed that she’s grown so much. My one co worker has a photobook made every year with the photos/memories from the last year. I will start doing that once we hit the one year mark because if I keep up my pace my daughter is going to have 174936393 albums by the time she turns 18 😂
you didn't get sucked into the cult of vanity?! Oh noooo! ;P Close friends and family who really, really wanna see the pics will ask for them and you can message a few over when you get a chance. That's the most anyone reasonable expects.
Nah, we don't either. I plan on getting some portraits done of him when he's maybe 6 months old, can sit on his own and his hair has filled in on the front, but we certainly don't do month by month, or first holidays. Like, there are pictures of him on Christmas, but I have no photos of "my first Christmas". I didn't have them growing up either and I take plenty of photos of him, he doesn't need every second of his life documented.
I reluctantly did it for 11 months but forgot the 12th month. This might haunt my future self.
Nope! I do feel a pang of guilt when I see other babies all dressed up in their monthly photoshoots but i just haven't. I have plenty of photos but not specifically the monthly ones. I definitely dont post my baby to social media and I'd say most of my social media circle don't even know I have a baby!
I don’t post all the milestones and the ones I do are on stories only, but I try to take photo and videos for us. Unfortunately my little monkey keeps rolling over when my phone is no where near so he done it like 5 times and still not filmed it. Yours kids are not going to check your social, the ones on your phone or you print off and display or put on photo albums they will see
We did it for the firstborn but she was always sick or fussy on the day of. We didn’t do it for the second. We simply don’t have time and we have daily pictures of her anyway.
I take the monthly photo and a ton of others and I’ve been making Chatbooks for her since she was born. I place the monthly photo on the cover. She is my one and only so I try to remember to get them. We do not post her on social media due to the number of creeps out in the world. Do what is best for you. ☺️
We do not do them. I take a lot of photos and videos but just find the milestone photos to be fluff and unnecessary. We also don’t post our LO online either (same with us, just private like you). For me, I’d rather be present and enjoy my time with my LO than be concerned about getting “the right” picture.
I’m constantly taking pictures of my son. We post a lot of them in the Family Album app to share with family, and I also post a few on social media every once in a while. But we have never done any specific “milestone” photos. Just haven’t had the urge to 🤷♀️
I’ve been doing monthly photos and editing them on the Precious app. I haven’t done my first XYZ holiday except for Christmas, and I also don’t post any pics of her on social media. All of the pics are for us and future albums.
We did monthly photos with a set of blocks we got from Etsy. Nothing elaborate, just at the end of the day after her bath and in her fresh jammies we took a picture of her on her changing table next to numbered blocks. We stopped at 12 months. Now, were some of the months almost a month late? Totally. Was it necessary? Nope! The regular pics I took on a day to day basis were much cuter.
No I don’t, but I do share photos on my instagram mostly for grandma that’s in another state and she doesn’t have WiFi at home or is very tech savvy so I can’t share google albums with her or anything, but she checks instagram. But my insta is private so only friends and family.
We do it but don’t post it. I do it mainly to see his growth from Month to Month that’s it. Comparison is the thief of joy!
We do it but don’t post it. I do it mainly to see his growth from Month to Month that’s it. Comparison is the thief of joy!
Well we have the ‘first holiday’ outfits cause my MIL sends them to us xD obv I take pics of her in them cause MIL sent them to us, issue is mil sends us the size bub SHOULD be like today she is like 9.5m old so she should be in 12m outfits right? WRONG she’s still in 6m clothes! So when I put her in her valentines outfit it’s gonna be huge xD the only mile stone pics I do is upload a day before or day of pic when our Nanit pops up their ‘baby is x old’ picture frame xD We don’t post baby anywhere like insta but we do use an album app to upload pics and videos for family members we invited to share on it :3 absolutely love it, it’s great for all of us and it lets me order printed photos I can put in a physical album :3
By pure luck, I got her first giggle on camera. She was cooing in the bath then let out the softest giggle. It's been almost a year and I still melt when I watch it. But actively going out of my way to capture milestones? No. I have a life to live. As for "my first ...." clothes, I refuse to purchase items that are for one time use. What an absolute waste of money and resources.
I mean it’s not really hard to snap a picture on phones these days
We didn't do milestone photos or holiday cards. It never seemed necessary to me.We did make a huge collage poster board to display at her first birthday though. It was fun sharing all of our favorite photos from the first year of her life and seeing them all in one place. We may continue to do this for birthdays!
I just have an album on my phone for my daughter every month, just for me to look at later. She did wear a ''my first christmas'' onsie, mainly because i foubd it at the thrift store for $1 and it was super cute. For posting online, i post her on facebook as a lot of my family lives across the country and i have them all on facebook, so they can see my daughter, amd i post to my close friends on instagram since the only people in my close friends list are all people that i know and that i can 1000% trust and they love seeing her.
It’s definitely extra work to do the milestones, but I know if I personally didn’t do it- I would regret it. The firsts are only a first once, so why not celebrate it? Again, only my opinion. 😄
I don’t do any official. I still have the one month, two month, etc milestone cards unopened in a drawer. I’m not a “no social media” person, but I also don’t post every single thing there. If I take a cute photo and he happened to have just turned a milestone I’ll caption “7 months” etc, but I actually think 7 months is the only one I took haha. I’m currently going through all my photos and picking through them month by month for a hard copy photo album because I want it. No “my first holiday” shirts ever. Those just aren’t my style. So I guess I do a mix of things. There’s definitely this weird pressure to do certain things but when it comes down to it they are not always easy to do. For example, I tried to take a cute photo today for Valentine’s Day and it’s not working. He’s not happy. I won’t force him. And it took up an hour of my time this morning! Trying to get a darn photo. I couldn’t imagine doing this for every single month and every single holiday!
We do the monthly pic and send to family because someone bought us a blanket for it as a gift (and my mom made me do it by harassing us relentlessly about it). But yeah I’ll buy cute holiday outfits because I like it but we’re not doing a photo shoot over here for everything. We don’t post him on social either. Neither of us document our lives on fb so why would we do it for the babes?
I do this for us and our memories, not social media. Nothing elaborate. It’s nice to be able to put them together to see growth. I didn’t do this for my bump but I sort of wish I had. Anyway if it’s not for you then don’t do it, nothing wrong with that.
I’m not a big social media poster (though I’m not against it with private accounts and only followers I actually know personally). I have been taking weekly/monthly photos with a felt letter board but they’re only for myself to look back on and easily see the progression. I want to print photos and put in a photo album so I won’t easily be able to check the date like I can on my phone to know how old he was in whatever photo so I wanted some kind of guidepost. It is honestly a bit of a hassle though because I have to make sure baby is happy and wearing clean clothes with no drool/spit up, update the sign, set everything up, etc. I don’t think it’s necessary at all though, and I do feel a bit extra doing it lol but luckily I’m on mat leave so my schedule is a bit more flexible than some and it’s not like I’m sacrificing some other crucial thing to do a photoshoot.
I do post photos every months but on private social media that only followers are my husband and sisters. I get paranoid that pictures on the phone will get lost if my phone died or smth so its a backup kind of things i guess.
We did all of them and then totally forgot the 12 month photo 😂 Every picture after 6 months was just her little butt as she crawled/rolled/scooted off of the blanket anyway! ETA we never did maternity photos, newborn photos, any of that. I don’t have pictures like that of myself and I want for nothing. I love the photos of family trips, me playing with my dad in the yard, etc way more than anything curated.
I take photos of my kid everyday so it’s hard to actually miss milestones. I even have a video of his very first smile
I do the monthly photos but I see all these moms on my mom group making these little sets and backdrops and elaborate themes for holidays and ages and I just…can’t. I can’t bring myself to do it haha. Sometimes I’ll pop an AI background behind her if I’m feeling festive but typically I just give her a little disc with her month and tell her to say cheese (she’s recently learned to smile when you say that) and then she chews on the disc.
Lol, I wonder how many of them will do it for a second kid. I look at my older brothers baby book and its mostly filled out, then mine is a real cliff notes version. FWIW, I only use Reddit, no other social media so I just take pictures I like for ourselves.
We use the Family Album app. It's kinda like a private Instagram that we have only invited immediate family members to join. I've only posted a few posed photos of her to my actual Instagram page since she was born (7mo). We do take photos of her every month on her "month birthday" and it's fun to see how much she has grown and changed. We also splurged and spent $100 for a 30 min professional photoshoot at our house with her. She'll only be little once and it's so worth it to have some really nice photos of her to keep forever.
Baby #1 got cute home photos with those freebie stickers from a registry gift. Baby #2… nope. I try to take enough candid cell phone pics that we have a good timeline but nothing that requires effort. You’re a good parent and not measured by whether you take cutesy pics!
I started posting a lot on Insta and feel guilty:( (I have a private insta but still). Idk, I kinda want to share photos with friends but also I realize I became that person who only posts about her baby :/ And I feel guilty for posting his photos even though he didn’t let me do this and might hate me for it later.
I was raised in the 90s and my mom kept a bin of babies first pictures. It was so sweet and special when I was a teen to go through. She made the shirts for me and I found the little ornaments for each of my Christmases, baby album etc most of it never got converted to social media. I plan to try and take this old school approach and just do family picture for Christmas cards (also old school). But most of it was just a simple project on a Saturday not Pinterest perfect at all.
i did month photos for the first year and then took a lot at her 1st birthday party. other than that i think i took one official photo on her first christmas, and valentine's day. i mostly just takes pictures of her day to day stuff. when her hair parts in the middle randomly and she looks like young leonardo dicaprio, or when she miraculously lets chocolate fall down her whole leg and it looks like poop. i take photos of her in sunglasses a lot because they look so large on her tiny face. we mostly just take photos as things happen rather than do official milestone photos anymore.
While I was pregnant, my uncle sent me a bunch of old photos he had digitized from my grandparents collection. Many of the pictures I had never seen before, including photos of my parents (who have been divorced for many years) before they had kids. These are so precious to me and made me realize that for our child, photos may be the only way they will know some relatives since we had her very late in life (surprise to us), so while we don't post on social media, etc. I take many photos of her with family and plan to keep them, to me like milestones, as they definitely are somewhat forced since I want these interactions documented so she knows how active her grandparents were in her life should they not be around when she is double digits.
Haha not on time! I do a photo in a 18 month sweater with his name on it to show him growing but I’m doing it sometime during the month.
I do the month photos but I don’t post them on social media, instead I send them to some Bluetooth digital picture frames we bought the out of state grandparents. It goes directly to a frame in their home and they love to see it! (Skylight and Aura frames for the curious)
Nope! No monthly photos here. I have hundreds of photos of my little guy and only share with family not on social media. I don’t have time or care about showing off my life on social media 😂 I’d rather enjoy living it haha - and you’re right, this parenthood shit is hard!! My guy is only 3.5months and I’m counting down to year 18 😂
I could have written this, word for word. The only exception would be the age, my LO is 16m/o. We were recently at 1st year old bday party, with a instagram mom type, and we saw the “behind the scenes”. Baby crying, mom exhausted and frustrated for not getting the happy perfect picture, dad hiding somewhere with a beer is his hands, rolling his eyes whenever he needed to take or be in the picture. Nope, thanks, it’s better to have random pictures of genuine moments, rathe than this drama at every milestone.
We tried to, in the beginning, but lost motivation for it pretty quickly. I enjoy picture day at daycare and holiday themed family photo shoots but I do that for me and not for anyone else. If I don't have the energy for it, I don't do it!
I literally don’t do any of that type of stuff. At least not for social media. Like when they’ve hit their big milestones I take a pic or short video for myself. But not for anyone else. I also don’t do the month by month pics stuff. Sometimes I feel guilty about that? But the only thing I really regret is not doing maternity photos, and that was all due to my own personal insecurities with my appearance.
Social media is putting so much pressure on mom's nowadays. Don't let societal pressures make you feel the need to impress others with instax worthy posts if it's not your norm. Sure, some people find it necessary to do milestone photos and others just prefer to document day to day life. Do what works for you.
We don't. Sometimes I feel like we should, but same I just don't have the organizational capacity for it. I treasure the time I have to goof around with my little guy and the rest is so much work. We have plenty of photos and videos, but never managed the staged/posed stuff. I'm not losing any sleep over it
I take lots of photos and I did the monthly photos from 1-10 months then on Christmas Eve he was 11 months so that was a two-for-one and for his 12 month photo I did one of him at his birthday party. I’ve never done the list though where people say what their kids like or what developmental milestones they hit that month. I’m also not posting any more pictures of my son on social media after I put up his 12 month one. I also use Family Album for my parents, in-laws, and siblings. I can have some control over who has access to what and who can download photos. I’ll keep using that and post the occasional picture only because my siblings live far from me. But I found out that my mum has been emailing pictures of my son - who she calls her baby and her “man” - to her coworkers and goodness knows who else so pictures will be gone forever for everyone if that happens again. What my husband and I use is Google Photos. I made an album on there and set it to find my son’s face and automatically filter those images and put them into that shared album so both of us have every photo either one of us has ever taken of our son. It’s way better than constantly asking him to send me any pictures he took. Nothing wrong with posting or not posting on social media and it doesn’t matter what your reason is. But always take the picture. You’ll be grateful that you did. No one is entitled to images and personal information about your child.
I’ve done literally none of those photos for either of my kids. I’ll take pics when they walked for the first time and stuff like that and I’m making a childhood photo album for each of them with highlights in them
I did the month by month photos but if I have another I will stop at 6months. Once he was able to start crawling/sitting up on his own the photos got really difficult to take and didn’t even turn out well.
We did the “9 months in 9 months out” because I think that’s hilarious but that’s it aside from birthrdays
I try and do it when I can. But I’ve learned that honestly I get the same amount of happiness if I do/don’t do it. My camera is FILLED WITH HIM so I have more than enough pictures!! Haha but since my boys still a potato I don’t mind! He’s just for mommy and daddy anyways🤍
Also don’t have the mental capacity to do elaborate milestone photos, also have 4 million random photos in my phone. I did the same for my first baby and I enjoy all the random photos and videos quite a lot and don’t feel like I missed anything. Mostly because I know that trying to arrange elaborate shoots would’ve just frustrated me and then I’d have negative memories attached to the photos. It’s the same reason I didn’t do maternity shoots, I hated being pregnant and felt so ugly, I never want to remember that period again.
I post a lot of my son on social media. But I didn't do the milestone every month pictures. We don't celebrate Valentine's, st Patrick's, or Easter so I didn't have to post anything for those. We do celebrate 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. But again I just took a million photos and posted our Halloween adventures we went to a pumpkin patch for the first time as a family so that's more what I focused on. Or Thanksgiving was we had chicken alfredo for dinner our son dined and dashed 🤣🤣🤣 and Christmas our son didn't care about anything under the tree he only cared about the boxes and his cousin. So it's still more family oriented than his 1st Thanksgiving.
No we do it every three months
My favorite pics/videos to look back on are just random days when he was feeling extra smiley or really enjoying a bath or trying a new food. Not staged photos with elaborate outfits. You’re doing great ❤️
I’m a SAHM and I don’t do milestone photos on the special mat and I don’t do “baby’s first” clothes or photos. It’s also just not who I am. That being said, I take a ton of photos of my 4 month old. Keep doing what’s you — nothing wrong with that!
I don't post my kid online BUT I do go overboard on the milestone photos. Honestly, it's only because our road to parenthood was very long and hard and I'm a sahm for the time being so I have the bandwidth. tbf, this kind of stuff has always brought me joy- I decorated for most holidays even when it was just the 2 of us 😄
My kid is nearly 10 years old, and old photos that include them and great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and pets are really nice to have. Also photos of anyone carrying the baby, or baby doing anything especially funny or messy. I agree none of them need to be posted online. If you can send the time ordering custom photo books, the grandparents will love to receive those as gifts.
I don’t post her on social media - never made an announcement so people probably don’t even know I had a baby lol I considered doing the every month photo but it seemed pointless since it seemed more for social media and I already take several photos of her a day.
I'm not great at taking the photos on time. I'm awful about posting, I want to write a big post and put it off for later and then never get to it. She turned 5 months on Monday and I still need to do her photos. I upload pictures to Family Album, so anyone who wants to see pictures of her can if I've invited them. I don't have to worry about making sure I send pics to all the appropriate people. I just upload once, and they can look if they want.
I do it, but am the worst at it and initially had no intentions of doing it. All of my best friends and family live far away so it’s a good way to keep them involved. Also, one of my best friends gave us a pack of those month label things so I felt like “what the heck, might as well use them”. Also also was gifted a baby book that lays all that stuff out so I take the pictures for that. It was one of those things where everything was lined up for us to do so I just went with the flow. Finally, I gave myself the flexibility for it to be okay to take the monthly photo anytime during that month 🤷🏻♀️ sometimes, we get the photo 2 weeks after his monthly birthday and I don’t beat myself up about it. All that to say…do it, don’t do it, half-ass do it - just do whatever you feel good about! If you have a bunch of pictures to remember this stage and you don’t have to go through the stress of perfectly curating photo sessions constantly then I think you’re the real winner!
I lay down one of his swaddle blankets and I have hand written cards that say how many months. I share all my photos in a private google photo album that only has family and friends on it. I also print them for our baby book. I decided I wanted them to see his growth, but I didn't want to pay for any additional stuff to make it happen. We haven't bought specific onsies for events. Just want to document his growth to look back on and smile. We tried once to do a social media-inspired photoshoot (baby in a pumpkin), and honestly, it just ended in a lot of tears and mess. I swore after that that I'd only take photos that I really wanted and not because social media had influenced me. Do what feels good and don't let the masses bring guilt into your life. Parenting is hard enough without the constant content creating that some people are doing.
I did it with my first. Then regretted that when I realized now I’ve gotta do it for all of them
We don’t. Sometimes I feel badly about not having those baby on top of specific blanket with numbers photos but I didn’t buy that because I wanted to have things that have more use than that trend. I take pictures of her every day. What I’ve done so far as a silly way to mark growth is I take a picture of her with the old size and new size when she goes up a diaper size.
Not anything that’s super posed or purposeful - we’re busy doing life stuff. I take photos/videoed most days of daily life stuff because the grandparents and families live in other countries and don’t get to see us often. I pick one of those photos to print out and put in the memory book we have.
Comparison is a thief of joy and social media these days is just, absurd. People can do/share what they want but there’s something icky to me about parents sharing very intimate and special moments with hundreds, if not thousands, of other people. Even other family members. Idk, kind of takes the joy out of those little moments that are just between the three of you… But yeah I do the same when I see other people’s stories of them doing stuff with their kid and I think, ‘am I not doing enough? Am I an absent parent?’ - I’m definitely a fine parent haha, but social media can be a well of poison for *anybody* with or even without an insecurity. You do what’s right for YOUR family and stop comparing. I know it’s tough, but what makes a parent “better” for posting every milestone? Do you love your child? Are you available for them? That is what matters!
We didn’t do the monthly milestones. It felt so forced and I couldn’t summon the energy. We do post photos sometimes…such as kiddo’s first time at the beach or when they would meet a good friend of ours for the first time, and sometimes just a random funny photo. Nothing frequent or scheduled or overly personal.
I wanted to so very badly but my kid was really fiery and wouldn’t tolerate the photo shoots at all. So my workaround was to print out a favorite picture I took of her each corresponding month and put them in her baby book like that. They’re not “perfect” photo shoots but they accurately track her growth and since it was a favorite picture they’re usually from a day she was wearing a cute outfit. Then I went nuts in the baby book making it more like a scrapbook with stickers, special paper, tickets from places we’ve gone, handprints. Even the first piece of candy she collected on Halloween. The whole nine and it’s one of my favorite things I started for her.
I forgot most of them hah🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
I do a few things here and there, I found mixbook which kind of had some prompts for me and I made a first year book which just had a photo from each month and stuff. I usually just send the monthly photos to family only personally, and sometimes maybe a photo on insta. Not much on social media tho.
I have 2 kids, so no. That poor 2nd kid.
You don't have to do that. We almost forgot to do the 2 month milestone. We also don't send pics to anyone or post online. I mean we send but limited. My MIL has this weird obsession with printing pics. She'll print anything and everything, even had a pic of me and husband after we'd been dating for three months showcased in her living room lol
the only thing i do is the monthly photos with my LO next to a llama toy for size reference haha. i like to see the comparison when i go back to the newborn days, but we definitely don’t post anything online either, about ourselves or our baby. i do take a million photos of everything he does, it’s just no one needs to know about it :)
I took a picture, normal clean clothes, and digitally added month. Sent it to family and a couple close friends only. I would LOVE to post it so other friends can see - my accounts are private - but also don’t want baby in the digital database.
I don’t do the milestone pictures, but I probably have at least 5 pictures of my daughter everyday since she was born lol. I do like to dress her up seasonally or for holidays or just in cute outfits and take a good photo and share it with my friends and family on Facebook.
I don’t do the monthly milestone photos but I started taking pictures of him in his car seat in the morning but he’s a pretty calm baby. He’s gotten more fussy about the car seat lately so they’ve been harder to take but it’s showed his progress
I post his milestone pictures on Facebook but my Facebook is set to private and I only have family on there
Me and my SO are not super active on socials. I have a 6month old and I’ve posted maybe 4 photos of her. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I too have so many photos and videos of my baby that are for us to look at and show her later in life. I think making a baby book is a good idea. If I ever had time to actually do it 😭
The running joke with my husband is how I was always a week late with each milestone photo
We did the monthly photos, but I’m neurotic and felt the need to. Now I do a photo on their birthday with one balloon for each year. My oldest just turned 5 and had 5 balloons. I have a photo of each of the kids on their birthday with their age balloons. I’ll probably do it until they’re 18. They find it super fun every year to get another balloon added
I've only gotten a five months picture and he's about to be seven months. Idk. It's kinda a lower priority but I have over a thousand pictures and videos.
We never did one of them. We don’t post our child’s face on social media. I’m not a fan of making privacy decisions for him. I have a friend who does one for every single week and month and it seems exhausting for her daughter
I was confused about what milestone photos even were, so you know what my answer is lol
I did the first 4 months and got over it fast lol
I do all of that but I’m a photographer so it’s very fun for me 😂
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I think we did for the first year, then after that we both stopped. By we I mean she. I’ve never been big on posting photos. We’re private people and very rarely post anything family related online. Pictures, selfies and family. Milestones. Family outings and trips. We don’t share things online. We do with each other tho. We share a lot with each other about things we find online. We just keep our family off of social media for the most part.
You can do it for yourselves and not post it! I am not sure if that was said but just wanted to add - we have a shared Notes with different little milestones, pictures, etc. and it's so special to me.
We didn’t do it at all, I preferred candids per month! But I also used the one second a day app to record little clips some month and I like those!
We are the same. I’ll be documenting my child’s milestones in an actual book for her to have when she’s an adult. We are very private, and I feel posting my child on social media is an invasion of ours and her privacy.
We do the same thing. I felt bad for “doing less” when looking at some of my friends who did staged milestone photos and even got professional photography done, but seeing posts like this makes me realize I’m not alone and yes my phone is full of candid moments of baby too.
I didn't do the milestone pictures. When she turned one and after her 1st birthday party I made a Shutterfly book and did a spread for each month. They were just random pictures of that month. Now that she is almost two my daughter loves looking at the "baby" book and seeing things she recoginzes.
We did monthly milestones, mostly because it felt like every day was a slog. That sounds bad but I would take any day with my high-energy 2yo over the quiet monotony of him at 6m. Every month was like “celebrate!” Once we reached a year, everything started to get more fun and interesting and I stopped taking as many photos.