Baby Showers

Posted by Laura Vellema on October 26, 2011

Instead of a Registry (I’m Going Green)

A lot of first time expecting moms, myself included, get really overwhelmed when they step into a baby superstore. There is such a huge volume of stuff and it’s hard to know what you absolutely need, what might be nice, and what would be a total waste of money. Even if you are a researchaholic like me and have lists of what items you really must have before bringing baby home, it’s still daunting to decide between 50 options for one essential item.

Another thing I feel when I go into any superstore is temptation to buy a ton because so many things are cheap. Unfortunately, much of the stuff on big-box-store shelves is not necessarily of good quality or it’s designed to be disposable. A huge amount of these superstore goods will end up in a landfill in just a matter of  days or months. I’m sure this is even more true with baby stuff that isn’t used gently. If I indulge in buying a lot of cheap stuff at a superstore I usually feel wasteful in the end.

Combining my environmental awareness and the overwhelmed feeling I get from baby superstores, I’ve resolved to get as many of the supplies and gear I’ll need for my baby boy second-hand. Enter PregTASTIC Episode 197 “Saving Money and Going Green Baby Guide.” This particular show made me feel supported in my green efforts, inspired to get things used, and alerted me to what I would be wise to buy new.

Armed with information, the concept of going green and buying used baby gear was simple enough for me. I enjoy a good yard sale, am happy to accept hand-me-downs, and am pretty savvy on Craigslist. But now that baby showers are being planned and gifts are starting to show up, I want to guide my family and friends to the used treasures that I actually need and not leave them to buy me duplicates or things I don’t really want. After throwing out many ideas of how to do without a superstore registry, I came up with a plan. I would make a wiki instead of a registry. (more…)

Posted by Jane Park on June 20, 2011

Registering for Baby Bunching

Recently a pregnant friend posted the question on Facebook: “I wanted to avoid having a baby registry, but everyone is telling me I need to have one. What are the essentials that I need to register for?” It was, as you can imagine, dear reader, a Pandora’s box. There was the Boppy faction vs. Brest Friend, the Björn devotees against Ergo converts. Bottle warmer users weighing in against those who declared them a waste of money. Gliders were a godsend while others swore that they simply served as a clothes collector in the corner of the room.

Reading the comments gave me a headache, and I could only imagine how overwhelmed the prospective mother was feeling. Clarifying, no. Tear inducing, yes. I realized that many of these “essentials” are personal choices and not exactly according to the personality of the parents. Usage depends many times on one of my favorite adages: each child is different.

While I wouldn’t dare open such a rudimentary debate to this sophisticated audience by simply posting my own list of essentials, I thought I should offer my thoughts on the things that you should have when you know you’re going to try for baby number two soon after number one. I’ve heard this method of family planning called “baby bunching.” It takes a certain woman with nerves of steel to survive having two under two and certain kinds of gear as well! (more…)

Posted by KC Wilt on April 7, 2011

My Eco-Friendly Baby Shower

My feelings of visiting Babies-R-Us to register for new gifts was the same apprehension that most new moms feel…overwhelmed. However, because of working in childcare I knew what everything was and its purpose unlike other new moms. But I still spent 2 hours and I had only 15 items tagged! I knew I needed certain things, but as I walked the aisles I knew of so many friends and family that had the items and weren’t using them anymore. Why not pass them on or even borrow them? It made me upset that I was contributing to a “baby landfill” somewhere with piles upon piles of plastic toys and diapers. If you’ve been a mom long enough, you know that babies are constantly growing out of things and most things have such a small shelf life anyway!!

I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t want ‘things,’ yet we all want to celebrate and be showered! Plus, the awkwardness of being blessed by being showered, but asking the host to do it ‘your way’! I threw the idea out to friends and PregTASTIC listeners and this was what we came up with (please feel free to steal the ideas!) (more…)

Posted by Oona Flaherty on July 20, 2010

A Virtual Shower for a Real Baby

It’s hard being away from friends and family. It’s especially hard when you’re pregnant. No one can simply pop on over to see how you’re doing and bring you a pint of ice cream; your mom can’t take you to shop for maternity or baby clothes; your girlfriends can’t oooh and ahhh at how beautiful and big your belly is getting while giving it a rub; and no one can easily come by for the afternoon to shower you with their love and gifts.

Luckily, in this day and age, we have the Internet. Which is the next best thing to actually being with people! Right??? Okay, it certainly doesn’t replace having your loved ones in the same room as you, but it provides a window through which you can share the journey of pregnancy with them. And that is exactly what David and I did.  We had a virtual baby shower (listen to PregTASTIC, Episode 177 for tips on Baby Shower Etiquette)!

You might be thinking… What in the world is a virtual baby shower? As much as I’d love to take the credit, I am not the first person to do one. You can google it and find some information about different ways to hold one, as well as a website that does it for you for a nominal fee. Wanting to personalize it as much as possible, however, I decided to do it my own way.

First, I created a website (easily done with iWeb). It’s a place for our friends and family to keep up-to-date with the progress of the pregnancy through journal entries, photos and videos. We also created web pages for the baby shower – an informational page, a fun & games page, and a gift registry page. Invitations were sent out to our loved ones inviting them to visit the website and asking them to save the date and time to “attend” our baby shower live on the web. That’s right…LIVE!  The response was amazing (mixed in with a little confusion which was easily cleared up)!

Our friends and family from all over the country, and even from London and Argentina visited the site and got to see how we were doing and participate in the fun. They filled out the fun & games page which included:

• Send a Message: write a note to the baby
• Guess the Details: birth date, time, weight, length etc…
• Guess the Name: the baby’s first, middle and last name
• Share a Recipe: either for mom and dad, or the baby

It was such a delight to read what everyone wrote, and so special to have such personalized entries from everyone. We got lovely messages, hilarious guesses and delicious recipes. The messages are being put into a baby book for the baby; we will declare winners for the guessing games after the baby is born; and the recipes are all going into our personal recipe book. And the gifts started to roll in!  And pile up – since we didn’t want to open them until our virtual shower. It was getting more and more exciting as the day of the shower approached.

The day of the shower arrived and at the set time, we and our loved one’s logged on to ustream.tv – we had a url and password just for our shower that we provided for our guests. Guests were able to chat with us online as we streamed ourselves live from our living room. At first, I have to admit, it was a little weird – a bit voyeuristic, and it felt like we were talking to ourselves. But people starting signing in – we had family from New York, Maryland, Texas and even Buenos Aires! Everyone started chatting with us, reacting to my belly with a lot “Oooos and aaaaahs”; people told me how beautiful I looked (which is always nice to hear); and they were also chatting with one another. So after we settled into it, it was actually a lot of fun!

We read out loud some of the messages and guesses that people made. Someone guessed that the circumference of my belly would be 62” at the time of the birth – which is actually how tall I am – so that got a lot of virtual laughs. My cousin guessed that the baby would be 15 inches long – which I thought was a dig on how short I am – laughs. And my dad guessed that our son would be named “Nick The Quick Private Eye” (exposing his own personal dream of having a detective grandson with the name Nick) – tons of virtual laughs.

Then the present opening commenced! We opened all of our wonderful gifts and presented them to the computer video. It was a joy to be surprised by all of the gifts and to read the sweet notes sent by everyone. I’m still kind a kid when it comes to opening presents, so I had a lot of fun ripping open the wrapping paper and pulling out each gift (I let David open a few). I think it was especially nice for our family and friend’s to see our delight at opening the gifts that they sent, and for us to be able to thank them right away. We got some beautiful stuff.

The whole thing took about an hour and a half. And after the initial awkwardness of being out there in the virtual universe, it was a real success. I’m so glad we did it. I think the people who participated appreciated being included in the moment – from wherever they happened to live. And I finally got the oohs and ahhhs that I’d been craving so much and, more importantly, felt the virtual arms of our loved one’s from all over the world supporting us and loving us in this amazing time in our lives. There’s nothing better.