The first time I became pregnant was back in 2012. I was the first of my close friends to have a baby and I figured a lot of stuff out on my own.
Since then, some things have changed and many things have stayed the same. There are always new products and new best practices that are being promoted. But there is one change since my first pregnancy that I have been so disappointed about.
When I was first pregnant with Tyler, I found a ton of cool and informative pregnancy apps. But my favorite was the Sprout Pregnancy Journal. This app allowed you to create a full fledged pregnancy journal right from your phone. You could upload pictures and write posts throughout your pregnancy which would later be printed into a book.
In addition, there were tons of prompts for each trimester of pregnancy. These were both fill in and multiple choice and involved your prenatal care, how you were feeling, symptoms, work life, and everything involved in pregnancy. There were even prompts for the dads. At the end, there were prompts for all the birth details and everything going on in the world at the time so you could look back on it in the future.
Once your book was complete, you had the choice of having it printed into a physical book or sent to you as a pdf. In addition to all your answers and entries, the book included what was going on with baby during each week of pregnancy.
We used the same app during my pregnancy with Hailey, however, 4 days after Hailey was born, they company stopped printing the books. The company cited a high cost and a lack of interest. I was so saddened and shocked. I hadn't had a chance to get Hailey's book printed yet, so we now just have the PDF. I do intend to get it printed and bound.
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I loved this journal for so many reasons.
You didn't have to print out pictures to add them to the book. Just upload from your phone.
You didn't have to feel inadequate if your answer didn't fill the allotted space. It just prints what you wrote
If a prompt didn't fit your situation, it simply wasn't printed. So no blank answers
Everything is printed, so everything is legible. (Even my husband's contributions.)
The prompts included all the important info as well as some fun questions
You are free to write your own entries as well
Now that I am pregnant with #3, I have been trying to find a journal that would fit this criteria. While I haven't found anything that checks all the boxes, I have found one that comes as close as possible. The location may surprise you, but it was actually on Shutterfly!
You may know that Shutterfly has a ton of templates for creating items out of photos including cards, invitations, phonebooks, calendars, etc. What I didn't know was that one of the photo book templates is for a pregnancy journal.
While Shutterfly doesn't have the countless prompts like there were in the Sprout app, there are some cute pages for the big milestones like when you found out, each trimester, how you announced, gender reveal, etc. Plus you can add as many additional pages and photos as you want and really customize the pages.
Here are some of the pages in the book I started:
You can use Shutterfly as your journal throughout your pregnancy by just continuing to save the book as you progress. You can upload pictures and make entries both via your computer and the smartphone app.
I keep referring back to my prior journals to get ideas for prompts and entries in my current one. If you don't have a prior journal and are trying to make sure you capture all the important and nice to have info, check out these pregnancy journal prompts.
If you are like me and love the idea of creating a pregnancy journal straight from your phone, then try out Shutterfly. You can use the app to create entries any time you have a free minute. Plus, uploading photos is a breeze since all your pics are probably on your phone anyway. I really think its the next best thing to the Sprout app. R.I.P.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
Cheers,
Emily
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