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Your Child's Birth
Commemorating a Most Special Day
By Mark Stackpole
Like most fathers, he jumped into his new role with both feet, which may have included too much celebration of the twins' arrival. "I have to admit that I became a sentimental pack rat with absolutely no judgment or control when it came to saving things associated with the birth of my children," Altamirano says.
Altamirano's list of commemoratives is extensive, but it is also fairly typical of a lot of new parents. There is the photo album full of ultrasound pictures, and since his children were conceived via IVF, those first images are of the babies at the cellular level. He has a 4D video, a collection of their hospital bracelets and blankets, along with a host of "firsts" – first hat, first receiving blanket, etc.
His wife has written a series of notes and cards for the babies, and there is the requisite set of handprints and footprints, captured both in clay and in paint. He also estimates that he took 6,000 pictures during their three-
day stay at the hospital and nearly 18,000 other pictures in the subsequent six weeks. Those numbers may be exaggerated, but the overall point is clear – even the most mundane moments in a newborn's life are cast in a more meaningful light.
Gwendolyn Osborne, now a grandmother, did not do anything to commemorate the birth of her son when he arrived in 1970. "I was a 21-year-old college stuent and, if I remember correctly, self-absorbed and looking for relevance under every bush," Osborne says. "All the more reason why I should have done something special."
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