My Second Baby Shower

^{Best baby shower card ever! Click image for source.}

About a month ago, I pitched the idea of a baby shower for my second kid. My mother’s response was:
“Really? I thought people only had showers for their first.”
This made me feel like maybe I was being greedy or something, so I asked a friend of mine who has FIVE kids about it, and she said: “No, have as many showers as you want. It’s your baby!”

Which to me made sense. I mean, whether you have one, two or three plus babies, it’s a time to celebrate. And by celebrate I mean, sit on your pregnant butt, eat cake and enjoy free stuff! Who wouldn’t like all those things? We have been getting lots of free stuff already, which is super awesome, because holy crap, baby and kid items are expensive!

One recent trend I’m less keen on though when it comes to babies, are gender reveal parties, which can get REALLY stupid, really quick. If you want your babies gender to be a surprise then that’s fine, but the people who pollute waterways or cause forest fires just to scream “My kid has a penis or a vagina!” are a special brand of self-centered moron. Honestly, why can’t you just enjoy some balloons or cake? (Yes, it always circles back to cake!)

Anyways, my shower is on Saturday. Most of my local friends kids are sick, and the friends who still live in Ottawa can’t make the journey to Belleville. So it will likely just be us, my parents and my in-laws eating small sandwiches and having sometimes awkward conversations while my kid pulls my husband towards the kitchen in order to mooch some of the eagerly anticipated cake or to be pushed on his sensory swing in the basement.

And y’know what? That’s ok. My first shower was pre-Covid, had lots of people and was a big hooray, especially since we waited so long to jump aboard the baby-making train! So while I don’t think you need to limit yourself to just one shower or party, if you were lucky enough to have one big event, you really shouldn’t feel pressured to have another one. Once you become a parent, you just want the chance to sit down, eat uninterrupted and have some adult conversation. (Even if it is awkward or full of unsolicitied advice, which you get a lot of once you reproduce.)

The important thing is the baby and how to best prepare for it’s arrival, not the numbers of people you can cram into a hall or your house, decorations, fireworks or the number of “Likes” on Facebook or some such nonsense. Showers, like weddings, are one day, what really matters is what you do for the years to come!