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July 2019 Moms
hestia-is-wearie
member
Baby Showers
hestia-is-wearie
member
It's almost baby shower season for our group! Questions? Need to vent? Post here!
Re: Baby Showers
Between my big family, DH's big family, several friends/coworkers, and all of MIL's high school friends she had to invite (sigh), my invitation list is about 70 women. Target's recommendation is to register for two gifts for every one person attending...does that sound right? I can't think of 140 things I want or might need and I feel like that would be asking for way too much. (I have one registry on Amazon and one at Target and I've been splitting the items between those.)
I wouldn't necessarily go on 2 gifts to every person, yikes! Some people will also probably go in on a gift together, so don't be afraid to have some bigger ticket items. But also have a good range of prices - maybe put your nursery theme and/or colors in the details if you want things to match.
With this baby my close friend is throwing me a Sprinkle. The guest list is way smaller and I do not need as much. I registered for new nipples for my bottles, replacement pump parts, pacifiers, diapers and wipes to show my preferred brands, and some clothes to show I need them.
Also, something to consider the more you put on your registry the more available to receive the registry closeout discount at the end. This will help you when it comes to those items you just have to have nobody bought for you that you know you're going to have to get no matter what. The item must be on the registry to get the discount if I remember correctly. So don't feel gift grabby by putting everything you can possibly think of. Because if nobody buys you will need to buy it eventually more than likely. For example, my monitor broke from baby number 1 and I've registered for a new one because I want the discount on it. If someone gets it out of the kindness of their heart that's awesome if not I get a discount when I buy it.
come up so fast when you need those items you don’t think you’ll need for a year. It goes by so fast!
I told my family we have ave most everything we need (minus boy clothes since we’re having a boy). So I don’t really want a shower, but if they want to throw a surprise sprinkle, I’m totally down. I just don’t want to know about it. I think my mom did my last shower at 34 weeks (I wanted it at 30 weeks because I wouldn’t be as miserable and to organize anything extra we needed) and DD ended up coming at 37 weeks. I feel like I didn’t have a lot of time to nest.
M was born mid December, pretty sure the shower was early October so that sounds about right anyway!
I think May sounds perfect.
But I’m also torn because I’m not sure where I’ll be living in two weeks. The plan was to move 4 hours north and stay with my parents but now they want me to stay here until my baby is born because Starbucks offers 12 weeks paid parental leave. My friends are here and my family is by my parents and both groups want me to have a shower so a I might end up with two but don’t want to end up overwhelmed and with no place to put any of it.
I’m staying on my sister’s couch and doing my best not to be imposing. It’s really tough.
I was less upset about the lack of gifts and more upset that it felt like people didn't want to celebrate my baby. But in reality I thinkt everyone wanted to celebrate but logistically no one lived close and no one local offered to organize it.
Sorry to hear you're in a similar situation @hakele. I can also relate that major life events are tougher to go through after losing a parent.
Because of how my family are and living away from friends since I got married, I've missed out on a lot of this stuff too.
My friend and her wife threw their own shower at their house and so many people showed up and it was a lovely time. Sometimes people don’t have the money to invest in throwing a party so you doing it yourself maybe asking for help securing a location or cake or whatever is perfectly acceptable. You also have to consider even if someone else is throwing it, you probably have to do a lot yourself anyway since they don’t know who to invite and what you envisioned for it.
Now if everyone said they’re not coming or they didn’t want to- then there’s room for hurt. But only about 15% of invitees show up anyway. The rest send gifts if that.
I'm hurt now I have no one to throw one for me here, and honestly if I did throw one for myself, I have no one to invite.
It sucks mama, it really does.
and then I spent about 6 hours crying about it all yesterday.
I appreciate everyone still providing some advice. I’m going to ask this one person here in town about her thoughts around it. She’s the only one who really mentioned a shower. And I’m going to talk to my stepmom about it.
also, I too have flaky friends
(Just saw that you don’t do FB. If you wanted to, create an account just for the co-ops. My co-op admin lives in Alabama and I’m in Connecticut. She just ships them.