Consumed by the day-to-day intensity of first-time motherhood, I took this responsibility seriously, zealously filling out every page and recording memorable milestones such as “Baby’s First Day’’ (“sleeps’’); “Baby’s First Outing,’’ (“pediatrician’’); and “Baby’s First Toys’’ (“giraffe mobile’’).

I kept this up for months before petering out somewhere between “Baby’s First Words,’’ (“Mama.’’ Du-uh) and “Baby’s First Tooth’’ (four months), because by this point even I was getting bored.

Also, because the last half of the book, “Baby Grows Up,’’ was open-ended: It had dozens of blank pages, and I worried I’d be a slave to this forever. Baby’s first cavity? Baby’s first “tardy’’ letter? When would it ever end?

Twenty-three years later, I know the answer. It won’t. As my mother has said many times, including last week: “Your baby is always your baby. And you never stop worrying.’’

I’ve always chafed at my mother’s worrying, and at what strikes me as her tendency to infantilize me, to regard me as a child even though I have grown children of my own. Like when I’m driving her car to take her on errands, and she never fails to say, “Very nice driving,’’ as though I’m still 16. Or when she buttons up my top button before I go outside.

This has not stopped me, however, from infantalizing and worrying about my own children. And I know this aggravates them every bit as much as my mother aggravates me. When my son told me recently that he was flying to the West Coast for a work-related conference, I gathered (from his eye rolling) he didn’t appreciate it when I later referred to it as “Baby’s first business trip.’’

But worrying is a reflex for mothers. I have committed many embarrassing acts in the name of worrying about my children - or as they would put it, disgracing them - and if I told these stories here, they’d never forgive me. Suffice it to say they included, in one instance, making a frantic 3 a.m. call to police when my son was late coming home, and a tearful late night call to campus security because my daughter didn’t answer her cellphone all day.

I’ll gladly share other people’s stories, though. A friend of mine once called her pediatrician’s emergency line thinking something was seriously wrong with her 6-week-old daughter. The baby’s chest was rising and falling in a way that didn’t look quite right to her, and she thought the baby was having a heart attack.

“What does her chest look like?,’’ asked the doctor who took the call.

“It’s going up and down,’’ my friend said.

“Your baby is breathing,’’ he said, sarcastically. “This is what breathing looks like.’’

Then there was my sister-in-law who Skyped my 23-year-old nephew last month. She hadn’t seen him in a few months and was horrified when she saw him: She was sure his Adam’s apple was swollen, and decided he had cancer. Since she was planning to visit him a couple of weeks later, she insisted he make a doctor’s appointment - he reluctantly complied - and she went with him.

“What brings you here?’’ the doctor asked him.

He pointed to his mother.

While all these new technologies make staying in touch easier, they also introduce new opportunities for worrying. We worry if our kids are texting while they’re driving. We worry when they don’t respond to our e-mails.

While my son was out West, he had some free time to take a “zipline’’ excursion through the mountains, which involved putting on a harness and whizzing along a cable at up to 80 km/hour over mountainous ravines.

A few hours later, he e-mailed some photos, including - a tad vindictively, I thought - a picture of him holding up the release of the liability form he’d signed; and a video of him zipping Tarzanlike through the mountains.

A rational person would know that since he was using his computer, he’d made it back safely. But a mother can worry retroactively.

To say nothing of concurrently. I’m always nervous when my kids are on planes, so after my son got back, he called from the airport.

“My plane just landed,’’ he said, dutifully.

“I know,’’ I said, since I’d been tracking his flight on the airline website.

“That doesn’t surprise me,’’ he said.

Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com