Journal

Although most people find it a hassle to keep a diary or a journal, I find that a journal would be a very precious record of our journey through motherhood/parenthood.  I must confess that I did not keep a journal, which is a real shame.  I just discovered what a great tool a journal is in storing up those precious memories.  You can look at the photo of your little one taking his first steps, but your journal will be the one that will remind you exactly how you felt at that moment. 

Writing may take time but I feel that it would be worth the trouble.  It would also be very therapeutic to vent your emotions in a journal.

These days, you can even have an online version of your journal (also known as weblog, or blog).  You can share your journal with your friends this way and some people have found this a tremendous source of support, especially if the people whom you share your journal with are also going through the same stage in parenthood.  These online journals allows you to determine whether you want a particular entry to be made available to public eye or not.  You can also upload pictures that go with that particular entry.

Check out Live Journal, which is a free online journal service.  Alternatively, you can also try Blogspot.

If you are interested to create your own weblog, you can get the software from Wordpress or Movable Type, or a Content Management System.  They are free.  It may be a bit complicated and you probably will need your own domain name.  I have not tried this on free hosting services like Geocities; neither have I seen anyone who uses this parked on such free services.  If you know a bit about web designing, things like cgi or html, you can try this.  Honestly, I am not very good at all these technical stuff but I think the manual is clear enough.  However, if you are completely clueless about designing a website, or site development, then this may be very daunting for you.

Your Own Website

You can also create your own website, or create your own online babybook.  There are free webhosting services which you can use to do this, e.g. Yahoo Geocities & Bravenet.

If you want to have your own domain name, most likely you will also need to have a paid hosting service.  With paid service, you also get a lot more features and memory space.  You can also do your own weblog.  Most web hosting service will also provide domain name registration service.  As to how to choose a good service provider, I will not elaborate here.  Instead, I will point you to a few service providers that you can consider.  They may not be the best or the cheapest though. :

For domain name registration :

1. Name Cheap

2. Network Solutions

For web hosting services :

1. Page-Zone Web Hosting - This is the one I am using.  It is cheap and good, in my opinion.