We get this question a lot: why did two busy moms decide to make a baby book?
Here's the honest answer — I made this book because I couldn't find the one I wanted.
When I was pregnant with my first, I did what most of us do: I started searching. "Best baby memory book." "Baby book keepsake first year." "Baby journal milestones." I fell down every rabbit hole on Amazon and Pinterest, ordered a few that looked promising, and kept running into the same problem. The books were either gorgeous and useless — beautiful covers with nowhere to actually put anything — or practical and forgettable, the kind you'd stash in a drawer and never want to display. I wanted both. A book pretty enough to leave out on the shelf, and functional enough to save all the memories. I couldn't find it. So Beth and I made it.
Why we didn't stop at year one
Most baby books wrap up right around the first birthday, which never made sense to me. Anyone who's lived through a two-year-old knows the memories don't stop — if anything, that's when things get more interesting. So the MaVie Baby Book follows your child all the way through their third year. You get the newborn milestones, sure, but you also get the toddler years, the ones that are just as worth holding onto and so much easier to lose track of due to pure exhaustion!
A baby book that holds the actual stuff, not just the writing
You don't just accumulate memories, you accumulate things. The ultrasound photo from your 20-week scan. The hospital bracelet. The tiny sock that fell off in the car seat and somehow became sacred. Most memory books give you lined pages and call it a day, so all of that ends up loose in a drawer, a shoebox, or — let's be real — your phone's camera roll, buried under 4,000 photos you'll never look at again.
That's why every MaVie Baby Book has real pockets built right in. Slide in the ultrasound picture, the "going home" hospital bracelet, a lock of hair, a birthday card — the physical mementos that don't belong on a page with tape, but do belong somewhere safe. You're not choosing between the keepsakes and the journal. You get both, in one place.
The page every parent ends up loving the most: Funny Things They Say
This one might be my favorite page in the whole book, and it's exactly why we didn't want the book to end at year one. A one-year-old isn't saying much yet. It's the two- and three-year-olds who really start talking — and that's when the truly ridiculous stuff comes out. Wild, nonsensical, accidentally hilarious sentences. And in the moment you think, I will never forget this. But you do.
The Funny Things They Say page gives you a spot to jot those lines down as they happen — no prompts to overthink, no pressure to make it profound. Just capture it while it's fresh. Years from now, this is the page your kid will beg to read out loud, and the page you'll be most grateful you didn't trust to memory.
And then, right on cue — the School Book picks up where it leaves off
By the time your baby book closes out year three, you're usually not far from drop-off lines and first-day-of-school photos. That's exactly why we built the MaVie School Memories Book to pick up the story from there — one page per grade, all the way through school, with the same pockets and the same easy prompts you're already used to. You're not starting over with a totally different system; you're just turning the page into the next chapter. Baby book to school book, one continuous record instead of a shelf of mismatched keepsakes with gaps in between.
A little advice if you're just starting your search
If you're pregnant or newly postpartum and staring down the same overwhelming list of options I once was, here's what I'd tell you to look for:
-
A book that goes beyond year one. The best moments aren't only in the newborn stage — look for something that follows your child through the toddler years too, so you're not left with a gap before school starts.
-
Guided prompts, not blank pages. A blank page is a blank page is a blank page — most of us stall out staring at one. Look for simple, specific prompts so you're filling it in, not agonizing over what to write.
-
Storage for physical keepsakes, not just space for photos. Ultrasounds, hospital bracelets, cards — you'll want a real home for these, not a folder that gets misplaced.
-
A binding built to last. This book should survive being written in, stuffed with photos, and handed down. Flimsy binding is the difference between a keepsake and a pile of loose pages in ten years.
-
Something you'd actually want out on a shelf. You're far more likely to keep up with a book you love the look of. Function matters, but so does wanting to pick it up in the first place.
-
A natural next step. If a book only covers baby's first year, ask what happens after. Look for one with a built-in path to keep going, so the story doesn't just stop.
I didn't get this all right on the first try either — the MaVie Baby Book went through a lot of versions before it became what it is now. But that's the whole point of making it ourselves: we got to build the book we actually needed, for the years that go faster than anyone warns you they will.
Thank you for being here, and for trusting MaVie to help you hold onto the little things. That ultrasound photo, that ridiculous sentence your toddler said at dinner — they deserve a home too. And when you're ready, we'll be here for the school years as well.