A baby has just been born, or is about to be. And in the middle of the exhaustion, the wonder, and the gentle chaos of those first days, there's a thought that crosses almost every parent's mind. One day, this tiny being will be a grown person. And they won't remember any of this.
They won't know what your sleepless nights looked like, or the way you watched them sleep. They won't know the world as it is at their birth, or who you were, at this precise moment of your life. Unless you write it down for them.
We keep photos, videos, sometimes a baby book. But we rarely write to the baby themselves. We write about them, to remember. We rarely write for them, so that one day they receive a message coming straight from the day they were born.
And yet it's the most beautiful of delayed gifts. Picture your child, at sixteen or eighteen, receiving a message you sealed the day they came into the world. Your words, maybe your voice, intact, traveling across all those years to arrive at exactly the right moment. It's not a keepsake stumbled upon by chance in a drawer. It's a meeting you set today, with the adult they'll become.
You don't need to be a writer. You just need to be you, today. Here are a few starting points.
Tell them about the day they were born. The time, the weather, who was there, what you felt the first time you held them. Those details you think you'll never forget, you will forget in part, and they'll never know them any other way.
Describe the world welcoming them. What's happening in the world this year, what worries you, what makes you hopeful. In eighteen years, it will be a precious testimony of an era they didn't live through consciously.
Tell them who you are right now. Your age, your life, your dreams for yourself, not only for them. The adult they become will get to meet the young parent you were, which is almost impossible otherwise.
Make them a promise, or a wish. Not a demand, a hope. What you wish for their life, the person you dream of helping them become, what you commit to giving them. Words that, read at eighteen, speak of a love that existed before any memory.
And simply talk to them. As if you were speaking to them grown, sitting across from you. It feels strange at first, and then the words come, because deep down you've been talking to them since day one.
How can I be sure they'll actually receive it, so far from now?
That's the real difficulty, and it's a fair one. A baby has no phone and no email address. A letter in a drawer can be lost over eighteen years of moving house. A file on a computer won't survive the changes of hardware. We compared every method in our complete guide to sending a message to the future.
WESEP was built for exactly this kind of distant meeting. You write, or record your voice or a video, today. You choose the date, the morning of their eighteenth birthday for example. The message is sealed, encrypted, permanently archived, and no one can read it before the date, not even you.
Since your baby has no contact details yet, WESEP gives you a Passport of the Orb, a document to print and slip into their health record or with their birth papers. It's what will open the message when the day comes, even many years later, even if WESEP no longer existed. And if you prefer, you can choose to be notified yourself on the date, to hand it to them in person.
You may never have as much to say as you do today, overwhelmed by this small being who has just changed everything. Don't let those words get lost in the fog of the first months. Take a few minutes, while they sleep, and write to them.
A first line, if you need one: "You've just been born, and as I write this you're sleeping against me. Here's what I want you to know, one day."
The rest, your heart will say.
Go further
Looking to write a letter specifically for your child's 18th birthday? Guide: writing a letter for their 18th birthday →