Infertility: Documenting my journey.

I think it's obvious by now that memory keeping is very important to me. In the past I used to only document "big" events such as holidays, trips and milestones, but through Project Life I have learned the importance of documenting the details of my everyday life, both good and bad. Nevertheless, until this past year, there was an area of my life that I left out of my memory keeping, and that was my infertility journey.

At first, I didn't document it because I hoped it would be over soon and that I wouldn't want to look back on this period of my life once it was behind me. Moreover, I thought I would remember most of it whether I liked to or not. However, as the years continued to go by, especially when IVF was added into the mix, it started to get difficult to keep track of all the details. Thus, I decided it was time to sit down and document my journey so far, and I'm so glad I did.

I've been using a physical 6x8 album for this project. I create my layouts in Photoshop and order prints that I slip into pocket protectors. When I first started this project there were no products dedicated to this theme out there, but last month the talented Amber LaBau released a beautiful kit called One In Eight that is just perfect for documenting life with infertility. If you're a scrapbooker like me and going through similar struggles I highly suggest you check it out :) And if you're not a scrapbooker there are other ways you can document your journey, perhaps in a journal, a special Instagram account or a blog. The most important thing is that you document it somehow.

You can find the elements here.

The matching papers can be found here.

Finally, here are the pocket cards.

To me this project has turned into a creative outlet that has become almost like an art journal at times and is very different from my regular memory keeping. These days I use my album for reference, because after a couple of IVF cycles everything starts to blend together and you forget the details of the previous ones. This album is very special to me and of course my biggest hope for this project is that I will get to share it with my child someday.