Baby Etiquette

I'm at that stage in life where everyone around me is getting married and having babies. This is all good fun but it is requiring a certain amount of organisation in my life as I try to get ready for all these upcoming events.

Hen dos and weddings require much saving for (whatever happened to just having a nice night out in town, why is the minimum spend now about £200?!), making sure diaries are free, possibly booking days off work, booking hotels, sorting out gifts and outfits.

Babies should in theory be just as easy to sort out - you know when they're coming (or thereabouts) you know what you can get them, and yet somehow, it always seems to take me by surprise. I decide what I'm buying/making and they're pregnant, and I see them getting bigger and bigger and yet somehow the two don't connect in my brain and suddenly I get the text announcing the birth of another bouncing bundle of joy and I panic.

This latest baby most definitely shouldn't have taken me by surprise. My friend's actually had a pretty terrible pregnancy and has been laid up for about 18 weeks of it. As in laid up. Every time she so much as sat up she would pass out and she ended up in hospital for a couple of months, whilst they ran a barrage of tests to try and work out what it was. The Doctors were stumped and all they could do was put it down to "one of those pregnancy things" would should clear up when she gave birth.

Luckily it did all clear up once the little man had arrived. Unfortunately for me though, the Doctors decided to bring the little person's arrival forward by a couple of weeks and induced my friend. This most definitely caught me on the hop and suddenly I had one baby and no present. Eek.

My plan? Take some babygros. Take my Sublime Stitching craft pad. Take my thread box. Take one bank holiday. Make something cool.

And you know what? I totally did make something cool. In fact I made two something cools.

Then comes the part I hate. I'm never sure what the right thing is to do as a friend/family member when someone has just had a baby. I'm conscious that I don't want to appear uncaring about the new addition to their family but I also don't want to appear that I have no idea how much time and work a new baby takes.

In short I have to walk the tricksy tightrope. Do I text straight away and I say I'd like to come and see the baby? Do I not text at all? If I've text once and asked do I text again?

I get far too stressed about whether or not I'm a good friend.

Anyway I have sent my text saying I would love to see the baby and I will now retreat to a safe distance. But, I want to make sure that the babygros still fit, I know how fast these little suckers can grow and it's bad enough that I've embroidered something he's only going to get to wear once, let alone something he's never going to get to wear because I didn't see him in time, so they have flown off in the post to hopefully be enjoyed.

Now the next baby is due at the end of August. I know it's due. So obviously I will have this present ready on time. Right?