Baby showers are as much a part of pregnancy as boob sweat and Braxton Hicks. When expectant moms aren’t busy reading books on different breastfeeding and birthing techniques and writing out their birth plans, they’re scouring the Internet and their local Facebook moms groups for recommendations on the best strollers, car seats, swings, and play mats to add to their registries. Showering new parents with swag has long been our way of saying, "I support you. I'm here for you." But a new, more meaningful kind of pregnancy party is making the rounds online, and it's proving that baby showers, in the long run, are kind of an empty gesture.
As a broke expectant mom in 2011, I certainly appreciated my baby shower.
The party took place inside a quaint little cafe in the middle of an antique mall, where we ate finger sandwiches and took turns racing to see who could change a diaper on a baby doll the fastest while blindfolded.
I came home with 14 bottles of baby shampoo, 11 million baby blankets, a wipe warmer, and more than a few tutus that would never see the light of day.
But two months later, I gave birth to an almost 9-pound baby who was too long for newborn size anything and who hated being swaddled. As I struggled through those hazy early weeks of motherhood, exhausted and alone, I realized there was nothing I could possibly have put on a registry that would have prepared me for what I was going through.
My daughter was born with a tongue tie, which means that within the first two days of breastfeeding, my nipples had turned to mush.
Every night we’d be up for hours as my husband tried to gently cradle the baby’s head and help her latch on while I cried through her feedings. I was constipated and sore from giving birth. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck, backed over twice, and then hurled over a cliff, vagina first. And my physical state was nothing compared to how I was feeling mentally and emotionally.
Within a few weeks of giving birth, I was having panic attacks at the prospect of being home alone with my own baby. I dreaded every feeding and started developing compulsive ticks to cope with my anxiety, like having to check the locks on the front door a certain number of times before bed and having to sleep with my hand on the baby’s chest all night to make sure she was still breathing. Yes, I was later diagnosed with postpartum depression. But what made those weeks truly difficult is that, outside of my husband, I had no one to turn to about the way I was feeling.
Only one person asked to visit me after the birth of my child. Other friends either waited until the baby was older or we lost touch completely. I don't blame anyone — I didn't know how to ask for help just as much as they didn't know how to offer it. But those first months and weeks of motherhood were the hardest, loneliest time of my entire life, and I learned a few important things about having a newborn that no one had really bothered to tell me before I gave birth:
1. Newborns don’t need a lot of stuff. They need diapers, a safe car seat, a place to sleep, and as many easily washable and simple outfits as you can possibly stock up on. None of these baby tutus and newborn Converse sneakers. Get a 40-pack of generic white onesies you can bleach and call it a day. You can shop once you’re both sleeping more than two hours a night.
2. Wipe warmers and automatic formula dispensers and all manner of electronic products that are supposed to make things easier but actually just make them take longer are useless wastes of $50.
3. The one gift new moms need more than anything — ANYTHING — is support.
So when I saw a recent Bust article about postpartum parties by Marisa Mendez Marthaller, I thought, "Yeah. Hell yeah!"
Marthaller argues that the baby shower, while helpful in amassing tons of gear, is actually not the best way to support new moms. Instead, she says, we should be organizing postpartum parties to make sure moms have everything they need after the baby comes. The “party” actually lasts for six weeks, and the guest list includes only the people moms actually want to see after giving birth. The mom can organize it herself to make sure she has help, or (better yet) a friend can take on the heavy lifting and plan it for her. Instead of bringing $100 worth of adorably useless registry finds, everyone on the guest list comes over only during designated visiting hours, brings a hot meal, and donates some of their time to helping with household chores, baby care, and letting the new mom get a few minutes to herself to wash the spit-up out of her crusty hair.
“What if we took all the energy, time, and money that goes into prenatal fanfare and instead put it toward helping new parents when they need it most: during the emotional and physical recovery of the first six weeks after giving birth?” Marissa Mendez Marthaller asks.
And she's right. Why are we still asking clueless new parents to make gift registries and spending hundreds of dollars on boring parties with ridiculous games when we could be funneling that time, energy, and money into actually being helpful? Sure, the financial help that comes from having a baby shower is important to many expectant parents.
But "stuff" is not a replacement for genuine concern, friendship, and support, and it's time for us to stop acting like it is.
Nearly 1 in 7 new moms will face postpartum depression after she has a baby. And 1 in 4 moms gets only a week of maternity leave, and some don't get any at all. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country in the world, often due to things like missed blood clots that occur post-birth, and adequate postpartum care for new mothers is basically nonexistent. In every possible way, society is asking first-time moms to go it alone in having babies, against impossible odds, with zero programs or procedures in place to make sure we even survive, let alone thrive, in our new roles as parents. And sure, good friends can't make up for all the ways our society fails us. But they are one of the few anchors that exist when we feel adrift in the sea of new parenthood, and we need them.
A baby shower is a kind gesture, but it's not enough. We have to say out with the silly diaper games and in with being willing to give of our time, our advice, and our physical ability to step in and do a load of laundry, no matter how spit-up stained it may be. We have to be willing to ditch tradition in the name of truly being there for the women we love. As Mendez Marthaller writes for Bust, “Everyone knows it takes a village. That village just needs some radical readjustment.”
