Creating a Weekly, Personalized Pregnancy Calendar

Weekly pregnancy calendars can give you something wonderful to look back on when your child gets older. Most kids love to hear about "where they came from," and a calendar detailing your pregnancy on a week-by-week basis can give them this. For you, it can be something to look at later and reminisce, or it can give you a way during your pregnancy to focus on the fact that everything is, in fact, moving forward towards the actual labor and delivery.

Microsoft Word gives calendar templates, available on their website, that provide a weekly option. Alternatively, you can create your own template using your favorite word processor or even construction paper, if you are artistic enough. During most of the average pregnancy, things don't change much daily, but each week, there is usually something new to add. You can use the spaces to discuss how you felt, what has changed and what sort of thoughts you had about your pregnancy. You can also add in the details of your child's development, as outlined by any of a number of pregnancy books or the Internet. During a particularly weepy stage, you can cut out magazine articles or images that have particularly moved you to paste on to your calendar, though no promises that you'll remember why they so moved you later on.

If you want a truly personal commemorative calendar, a scrapbook format can provide the best ability to show you what happened during the course of your pregnancy. You can bind the pages you create at a printer shop, such as Kinko's, or you can go more low-tech and place them in a three hole punch binder. Alternatively, you can purchase a scrapbook at a craft shop. Within these pages, including the exact times that things happen will help you focus on what's most important in your life during your pregnancy-your baby. Alternatively, you can create a giant map of your pregnancy using easel paper, stretching it across wide amounts of space as a physical reminder of how long your pregnancy has lasted, how much you went through, with a final photo of the beautiful result, worth every second. Though not good for storage, this option wins out in terms of symbolism appeal!

You can paste items that are of particular interest into the book. If you found your child's name while flipping through a magazine, cut that article out and paste it in the book. Have a receipt from 3 am when you absolutely needed to have chocolate or you would die? Paste it in there-and highlight the time! Stick in weekly photos of your growing belly.

Other ways you can decorate your weekly pregnancy calendar is by pasting stickers or images of cute babies inside. If you like the actual internal development side, find images of developing fetuses to paste within, or include your own ultrasound images.

You can go as specific or unspecific as you like, depending on your taste. You could faithfully record everything that happened, everything you felt, for the entirety of your pregnancy here, or you can stick in a few quotes and photos, with the emphasis on overall appeal rather than details. The great thing about a personalized pregnancy calendar is that it's personalized for you, by you.

And, at the end of it all, you can cuddle your beautiful baby and show him or her the steps it took to lead up to his or her existence.