The Man’s Guide to Baby Showers
All Through my young adulthood the idea of attending a baby shower got under my skin. The idea makes no sense to me. I attended only one that I was invited to. Women are nuts. Pregnant women are even more nuts. You definitely don’t want any chance of your woman catching the baby fever. Most importantly, you are the one that’s having a baby. I am not having a baby. Why do I have to give you presents. It all just seems like a bunch of B.S. i would avoid these places at any cost. Besides, I already know that im going to show up and somebody is going to draft me into some ridiculous game that involves fake poop or something. Light Beer (if any), Cake, No smoking, this is a party for women. After all of this I probably wont see my friend for at least a year because he’s going to be busy with his new family. It just wasn’t my thing. I’m well into my 30’s and I still know plenty of men with this exact same sentiment. Most likely, this is the reason why baby showers are usually not co-ed .
I am not the only person in the world or even my circle of friends that thinks baby showers are nonsense. There is quite a few different views that I learned of prior to our shower. Jews do not believe in them. They actually think its bad mojo. I’m not Jewish. So that excuse wouldn’t work. Old school Italians believe in having the baby shower after the baby is born. That seemed a little “old world” to me. Probably because back in the day there was a lot more uncertainty right up until the day the stork drops the little guy off. The idea that really struck me and stuck with me is that the baby shower is a blessing. Celebrating right before the baby comes with your friends and family and receiving gifts are blessings. I say it all the time, I believe in the power of manifestation. So having this time of love and support, combined with selfless giving from those around you and your new family is a great way to bring a new soul into our world. It’s a blessing in the verb sense of the word. So I want the biggest blessing that we can have. I want people to bless so hard they can’t get up the next morning! When you explain it to a man this way all your friends will show up.
This is a great time to tell you that you really have to be in tune to what your woman’s expectations of life are. My girl is an all American but she is not what I consider your average American girl. She doesn’t have the average American girly princess fantasies about things. She doesn’t have the big princess wedding fantasy and she doesn’t have the big princess baby shower fantasy. I knew this ahead of time. If you know for a fact that your woman is the type that is going to need a big princess party, You may want to do these 3 things: 1) Do everything you can do make sure it happens and she is happy. 2) stay the hell out of the way and let these women do whatever the hell it that they are going to. 3) Don’t invite your guy friends. Just be ready to do some heavy lifting when the time comes. They are women and things don’t need to make sense to us man folk. At this point in the game its about the blessing of the baby, and quite possibly in your case completing her lifelong Disney Princess complex. There is nothing wrong with that. Its very normal. It’s so normal in fact, that it left us with a lot of questions on how to even go about this whole shower thing. We did what her and I do best. We wrote our own script.
I realized by the end of the first trimester that the baby is coming. I know it sounds odd. Believe it or not things might not get real for you until much later than it did for me. I don’t look at my experience as being behind schedule. Even today I hear people say all the time¸ “it hasn’t become real yet.” And they are way further down the road than I was. So let me tell you ahead of time. its real. The Stork is coming. I realized that a baby shower was inevitable. We talked about it. My wife doesn’t have the princess fantasies, but there was going to be a baby shower for sure. We decided that it would be co-ed. We decided that since it was co-ed that we won’t subject the men to any overly girly activities and we decided that if we are asking people to spend their time and money with us that we better make sure it’s a damn good time. The Baby was due in mid-June. We chose the date and reserved the venue in February. We did it as soon as we knew where and when. We didn’t want any competition from others trying to book our same venue. We chose to have an outdoor BBQ in the park in the month of May. The date was almost exactly one and a half months before the due date. We drove around the park and looked at pavilions first. A good thing to think about if you are planning one of these things in a park, that may not be on your mind in the first trimester, is the proximity to the Bathrooms. We made sure that we were very close to the public bathroom. By the time your shower rolls around your woman is going to need to pee. Often. Make sure facilities are nearby. When you are thinking about dates to plan your shower, here is the things that you want to consider: Your lady is getting heavier, less nimble, more uncomfortable, and more annoyed every single day. The earlier that you have this shower, the easier it will be for her to enjoy it. Next, female creatures have a phase of pregnancy called nesting. This happens toward the end. Its something that you may not understand but its in their source code and when the hormones tell them to start nesting they just need to start nesting. You just have to roll with it. Things may get a bit wacky from our point of view on the outside looking in. things don’t need to make sense to us. so prepare yourself for this. Schedule your baby shower early enough before the due date so that your woman can focus her crazy on unwrapping and arranging her new gifts in the baby’s room and the house. Its going to happen. There is nothing you can do about it. trust me you do not want her to focus her crazy on you. A month and a half is perfect. Less than a month is cutting it close. Any earlier than that , lets just say there is a lot that can happen. It’s for these reasons that no matter what kind of shower your woman needs to have, you the man of the house, need to make the final call on the date of the shower. Don’t expect anybody else to see the writing on the wall like I do. You will both reap the benefits of getting this right. But you will be the soul sufferer if you get this wrong.
Registering for gifts is easy. Register everywhere. Register for everything. Registering is cool because all your people will be able to see what everybody else has already crossed off your lists. You don’t wind up with duplicates. All the big stores accept returns. My favorite is buybuybaby they take anything back and give you store credit. They don’t even care if its used. You can register online or you go to the store with a price gun and scan upc’s of all the crap that you think you are going to need. Test drive some strollers, and travel systems. Im not here to tell you what to get. Your lady will do that. What im saying is don’t hesitate to scan some stuff that you personally think would de dope to have for your kid. Trust me your lady is not going to take no for answer from you. especially if she is the princess type. Last but not least, ask for diapers. Ask for every size diapers. You will be using lots of diaper. We offered a diaper raffle. That was the only game we had planned. Bring a box of diapers, any size box, and size diapers. Get a raffle ticket, win a bottle of Ciroc.
When it comes time for the shower even if you are involved like me, the girls are going to handle all the decorations. They just are. They are going to handle the cupcakes , the cakes, the salads, Stay out of the way. Make sure they have wine, or champagne or light beer. Be ready to move tables and chairs when they need it. there might be one of her crazy friend’s broken husband running around doing their bids stringing up balloons. You know the kind of guy that needed my blog years before I came up with it. I got the meats, the booze, the tunes, the coolers and the ice. I worked the grill. The day will come and go. It’s a right of passage for your woman. It’s a blessing. Let me tell you that we had a great time. the whole crew showed up and showed out. All my boys came. We didn’t have to buy diapers for 8 months. My little guy got blessings that only men would pick out, because I tagged along for the registry and because the dudes came through to bless our family. Nobody got the bottle of ciroc because we drank it all.
