When my oldest son was first born, I told our family I was going to have his photo professionally taken every month of his first year and then every year after that to record his growth and change.

They thought I was nuts.

After a few months of the grandparents receiving photos of their new grandson in the mail, however, they changed their tune! Suddenly, they began looking forward to it, and they were surprised how much babies change in just a few short weeks.

Of the many, many things I've spent money on these 15 years of my sons' lives, the one thing I've never regretted? Photos!

Here's how our mommy M.D.'s — doctors who are also mothers — preserve their own family memories.

"I've been scrapbooking since before my sons were born," says Rebecca Reamy, M.D., a mom of two sons and a pediatrician in emergency medicine at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Georgia. "I have a room with all my scrapbooking supplies and space to work."

"During my babies' first years, I loved all the 'firsts' and how much the girls changed their first year of life," says Marra S. Francis, M.D., a mom of six children and an ob-gyn in Helotes, Texas. "I still can't believe that kids go from a big lump to a walking, talking little person in just 365 days. I took a lot of pictures. You think you will remember what they looked like at six months, but it's impossible!"

"My first daughter has a scrapbook for her first year," Francis adds. "My second daughter has a scrapbook with photos inside of it just needing to be organized. My third daughter has a scrapbook that's still in the wrapper. I figure one day I will have the time to organize everything. For now, I have photos waiting to be organized and displayed. Life happens!"

"I loved watching my daughter develop and change and grow," says Melody Derrick, M.D., a mom of one daughter and a family physician in private practice with Central DuPage Physician Group, in Winfield, Illinois. "It's so great to see her learn new things and develop into a little person! One thing I did that was fun and memorable was take pictures of her in all the different outfits that people bought us. My daughter has two grandmas who love shopping, so she had a lot of clothes! I made sure to take a picture every month on her month 'birthday,' and then we put the photos in an album online and shared it with friends and family. It was really fun to see how she changed from month to month. Sometimes instead of a thank-you note, I would e-mail people a picture of her in the outfit they bought her with a message from us saying thanks!"

"With my older son, I wrote down a lot of memories," says Heather Orman-Lubell, M.D., a mom of two sons and a pediatrician in private practice at Yardley Pediatrics of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Pennsylvania. "I put some loose-leaf paper in the back of his baby book, and I noted funny things he did or later said. I also took tons of pictures. I think with my oldest I took a picture every time I changed him into a new outfit! It's so much fun to record those memories so that you can look back and see the funny things your children said or did and the faces that they made. Kids love to look at photos of themselves, too, when they get older."

Dr. Rallie's Tips

My two youngest boys were born so close together that I didn't have time to even think about organizing a photo album or a scrapbook for the first several years of their lives. I did make sure that I took plenty of photos along the way, and I stored them in shoeboxes in a safe place. When our sons were both in school, my husband and I finally found the time to sit down and put the photos into scrapbooks and photo albums. By that time, the boys were old enough to help, and we had so much fun looking at all their baby pictures and reliving our memories of those moments. Before that, I had always felt a little guilty that I hadn't taken the time to make scrapbooks and photo albums, but as it turns out, I wouldn't have had it any other way. — Rallie McAllister, M.D., M.P.H., mom of three, nationally recognized health expert and family physician in Lexington, Kentucky

Jennifer Bright is a mom of four sons, co-founder and CEO of family- and veteran-owned custom publisher Momosa Publishing, co-founder of the Mommy M.D. Guides team of 150-plus mommy M.D.s and co-author of "The Mommy M.D. Guide to Losing Weight and Feeling Great." She lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. To find out more about Jennifer Bright and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.