What I Wish I Had Filmed — Real Parents Share Their Biggest Regrets
We asked hundreds of parents a simple question: what do you wish you had filmed?
The answers were not what you would expect. Almost nobody said “first steps” or “first words.” Those are the moments everyone remembers to film.
The regrets were quieter than that. Smaller. The kind of moments that feel unremarkable while they are happening and become irreplaceable the moment they are gone.
What follows is a collection of real regrets from real parents. Read them now, while your baby is still small, and let them change what you point your camera at today.
“I wish I had filmed myself”
This was the single most common answer, and it was not even close.
Parent after parent said the same thing. They have hundreds of videos of their baby. They have almost no videos of themselves with their baby.
“I was always the one holding the camera. I have maybe three videos from the entire first year where you can even see my face.”
“My daughter is seven now and she asked to see videos of me when she was a baby. I barely had any. She looked so confused, like she could not understand why I was not there.”
You are half of your baby’s story. You are not the camera operator. You are the co-star. Your face, your voice, your exhaustion, your laughter, your child needs to see those things.
Hand the phone to someone else. Set up a tripod. Prop it on a shelf. Do whatever you have to do, but get yourself in the frame.
“I wish I had filmed the sounds”
Babies make sounds that you think you will remember forever. You will not.
The specific pitch of their cry at two weeks old. The little grunting noises they make while feeding. The first time they laugh, not the polished video you posted, but the raw, surprised, open-mouthed giggle that happened three seconds before you grabbed your phone.
“My son had this babble at around eight months where he would go ‘babababa’ with this rising tone like he was asking a question. I can almost hear it in my head but not quite. I would give anything for a recording.”
“She used to make this humming sound while she nursed. Like a tiny engine. I thought I would never forget it. I forgot it.”
Film sound on purpose. Do not just film the visual. Hold your phone close. Capture the breathing, the babbling, the crying, the cooing. Turn off the music in the background. Let the baby be the soundtrack.
These sounds have an expiration date, and you will not know it has passed until it is too late.
“I wish I had filmed the mundane routine”
Nobody thinks their Tuesday morning routine is worth filming. Everybody is wrong.
“I wish I had footage of a completely normal morning. Waking up, making a bottle, sitting in the rocking chair at 5 AM, the house still dark, just me and him. I did that every single day for a year and I do not have a single video of it.”
“The nappy changes. I know that sounds ridiculous. But she used to kick her legs and smile every time I laid her on the changing mat, and I changed her thousands of times and never once filmed it.”
“Bath time. We did it every night for two years. Same routine. Same bath toys. Same towel with the little hood. I have maybe one video.”
The routine is the thing. It does not feel special because it happens every day. But that is exactly what makes it special. It is the texture of your baby’s daily life, and it changes so gradually that you do not notice it shifting until the routine is gone entirely.
Film one full routine, start to finish, every few months. Morning routine. Bedtime routine. Feeding routine. Nap routine. These are the videos that will gut you with nostalgia, because they capture not just a moment but an entire way of life that no longer exists.
“I wish I had filmed the nursery before it changed”
The nursery you built with such care will be disassembled so slowly that you will never notice it disappearing.
“We spent weeks setting up the nursery. The cot, the mobile, the little animal prints on the wall, the rocking chair by the window. By the time he was two it was a toddler room. By three it was completely different. I have one photo of the original nursery. Not a single video.”
“I wish I had done a slow walk-through of her room when it was still the newborn nursery. Just a sixty-second video panning around the room. I would watch that on a loop.”
Film a slow walk-through of your baby’s room. Open the door. Pan around. Show the cot, the drawers, the clothes hanging up, the toys, the chair where you sit for the night feeds. Show the view from the window. Show the mobile spinning.
Do this once a quarter. The room will change, and these walk-throughs will become a time-lapse of your baby’s childhood.
“I wish I had filmed grandparents with the baby more”
This was the answer that carried the most emotion, for obvious reasons.
“My father died when my son was three. I have exactly two short videos of them together. Two. He adored that baby. They spent hours together. And I have two videos.”
“My mother-in-law sings to the baby in Gujarati every time she visits. I kept meaning to film it. I have not filmed it yet. She is eighty-one.”
“My parents live far away and they only see the baby a few times a year. Every visit I think I will film them together and then the visit is so hectic that I forget.”
Film your parents with your baby. Film your partner’s parents with your baby. Film it today if you can.
These are the videos that become most precious with time. The way a grandparent holds a baby. The songs they sing. The faces they make. The stories they tell. The way they look at this tiny person who carries their lineage forward.
You will always have footage of your baby. You will not always have the chance to film the people who love them most.
“I wish I had filmed my partner’s first solo moments”
The first time your partner was left alone with the baby is comedy, drama, and love story all at once.
“My husband’s first solo bedtime was an absolute disaster and apparently the funniest thing that has ever happened in our house. I was not there. There is no video. He tells the story but it is not the same.”
“I went back to work and my wife sent me photos but never videos. I wish I had asked her to film little clips during the day. I missed so much of what those early solo days looked like for her.”
The other parent’s experience matters. Their fumbling with the car seat. Their first time getting the baby dressed by themselves and choosing an outfit that makes no sense. Their face when they realize they have successfully put the baby to sleep alone for the first time.
This footage becomes funnier and more meaningful every year. Film it.
“I wish I had filmed the mess”
Almost every parent admitted to only filming the “nice” stuff.
“I cleaned up before I took videos. Every time. I moved the laundry out of frame. I made sure the background was tidy. Now I have all these videos that make it look like we lived in a show home, and we absolutely did not.”
“I wish I had filmed the real state of our house at 3 AM. The bottles everywhere. The muslin cloths draped over every surface. The pile of baby clothes on the chair. That was our actual life and I have no record of it.”
The mess is the truth. And the truth is more valuable than any staged shot. Film the bomb site that is your living room. Film the kitchen counter covered in sterilizing equipment. Film the bedroom with the co-sleeper wedged in and the pillows arranged in that specific way that only makes sense when you have a newborn.
That mess is temporary. You will miss it.
“I wish I had filmed a message to my baby”
This might be the most powerful regret of all.
“I wish I had sat down in front of the camera during that first week and just talked. Told them how I felt. What the birth was like. What they looked like the first time I saw them. What I hoped for them. I was so overwhelmed I did not think of it, and now that raw emotion is gone.”
“I started writing a journal but stopped after two weeks. I wish I had just spoken into the camera instead. It would have taken five minutes and it would have been so much more real than anything I could write.”
A video message from you to your baby, recorded in those first days and weeks, is a gift that cannot be replicated later. The emotion you feel right now is specific to right now. The overwhelm, the love, the fear, the wonder, it lives in your voice and your face in a way that words on paper can never capture.
Sit down. Press record. Talk. It does not need to be eloquent. It needs to be real.
What the creators teach us
Some of the most watched content from family creators is exactly the kind of footage these parents wish they had.
[Creator Reference Placeholder] went viral not with a milestone video but with a simple clip of their baby laughing at a ceiling fan. Three million people watched a baby laugh at a ceiling fan. Because that is the stuff that moves people.
[Creator Reference Placeholder] films intentionally mundane content, folding laundry with the baby on the floor nearby, making dinner one-handed, the car ride home from daycare. Their audience is enormous because this content feels like looking through a window into your own life.
[Creator Reference Placeholder] recorded a video message to their newborn in the first week and shared it a year later. The comments section was full of parents saying they wished they had done the same thing.
The creators who resonate most are not the ones with the best cameras or the most dramatic moments. They are the ones who film what everyone else forgets to.
Your permission slip
If you are reading this while your baby is still young, you have time.
You do not need to film everything. You do not need to become obsessive or anxious about capturing enough. That defeats the purpose.
But you can start being intentional about what you point your camera at.
Film yourself. Film the sounds. Film the routine. Film the room. Film the grandparents. Film your partner. Film the mess. Film a message.
Not because you should feel guilty about what you have missed. But because the parents who came before you are offering you something valuable: the benefit of their hindsight.
Take it. Use it. Point your camera at the things that feel too ordinary to bother with. Those are the things you will want to see again.
The bottom line
The moments parents regret missing are never the milestones. They are the ordinary, unremarkable, everyday moments that felt too small to film and turned out to be the entire story. You cannot go back and film what is already gone, but you can decide right now to capture what is still here. The sounds your baby makes today will be different next month. The way your home looks right now will change by next year. The people holding your baby today will not always be here. Film it. Film the real, messy, mundane, beautiful truth of this moment. Future you will be so glad you did.
