Planning a Baby Shower – What to Include

Baby showers are lively get-togethers usually composed of 4 main activities : socializing, eating, playing games and the best one of all, opening all those baby gifts! Planning a baby shower is the first step.

Continuing roughly 2 to three hours, it’s often a good concept for the host to outline a schedule of baby shower activities ahead of time so that the pace of the party remains steady.

Baby Shower Schedule: The beginning of the baby shower is a fun time for socialization.  The majority of the guests will need to greet one another and talk with the mother-to-be to discover the details of her pregnancy.  

Something to eat is always anticipated at a baby shower and it need not be intricate.  It’s just got to be planned.  Finger foods are easiest and guests can eat across the entire length of the shower, with a special time, often towards the end, dedicated to eating the cake.

Perhaps the most popular activity in most baby showers is the game time. Baby shower games are fun and there’s no end to the variety of games, either.  Nearly any game can be refurbished to make it acceptable for a baby shower.

If the guests are a fun group, plan on playing a variety of several baby games.  Just be sure to decide on the games about three weeks prior to the shower so you know what games that may be played as the host will have to make certain she has masses of game pieces and obligatory supplies.  And she’ll need prizes to award the game winners, too!

Guessing the circumference of the expectant mother’s belly is a traditional game that’s's played at many baby showers.  A simple game involves filling a baby bottle with jelly beans or q-tips and having each guest make a guess how many the bottle holds.

There is also baby Bingo, baby tic-tac-toe, pin the pacifier on the baby, and so many more.

If games don’t appear appropriate for the group, for who knows what reason, plan a group project instead.  When the project is finished, it’ll be given to the guest of honor as a way to remind her of this special occasion.

Project ideas include scrapbooking, quilting, making a video documentary, or making something similar to a hand-painted floor mat or wall hanging the pregnant mum can make use of in her home.  

Creating a recommendation book is easy.  Get a notebook full of blank pages and pass it around to each person.  On another page, each person writes down a bit of parenting advice and signs the page.

If men are invited, plan the baby shower as more of get-together, maybe an outdoors BBQ.  The men can make the food and assemble the baby gifts as they’re opened while the ladies relax and have fun!

Keeping the Best for Last: Opening the baby gifts is surely the highlight of the baby showers (at least from the expectant mother’s standpoint).

Be sure someone is in charge of recording a list of the baby gifts and the guest who gave each.  Set aside the bows, too so that when it’s all over, the guest of honor can be crowned with a silly bow hat!