The Baby Shower

Life feels a little strange at the moment. I feel like I'm betwixt and between - leaving a younger me behind and edging slowly towards a more 'adulthood'. This was demonstrated best by the past couple of weekends I've had. One saw me go out for a few drinks after work that resulted in me getting home at 4am and the next saw me organising and throwing a baby shower for my friend. See what I mean? It's all a bit confusing.

This friend has been pretty awesome throughout her pregnancy as I've told you before. She might actually be the nicest kindest person I know, I've never heard her say a bad word about anyone, she never complains, never moans and is just generally marvellous.

So a person like that obviously deserves a baby shower. Another friend and I decided it should be a surprise baby shower (because it's always fun to surprise heavily pregnant women I find) and enlisted the help of her Mum, who wanted to be part of the day.

We divided and conquered. My friend's Mum wanted to host and do all the food so that left me and the other friend to be in charge of decorations and party games and inviting other people. We only had a couple of weeks to get organised so we were quick and decisive and efficient, three of my very favourite things.

We met one night after work and got creative. We wanted to make bunting but quickly and on the cheap - enter lots of coloured paper and some string, scissors and sellotape. Very soon we had us some flipping marvellous looking bunting. Fabric would be awesome and everything, but I seriously think this stuff looks pretty good, don't you?

We also made other little bits to put up. Another banner to hang up which says "Squib" which is what the baby it being called in utero. More coloured paper, scissors and pritt stick with ribbon to thread through and extra embellishments came from a spare bit of border from when my friend decorated her baby's bedroom.

And finally a washing line made up of some baby clothes, which looked brilliant hung up beneath the table that held all the food and the nappy cake that my friend made - a 2 tier cake of nappies, bibs, baby lotion and other baby-related bits and bobs.

Decorations done we moved on to sorting out the games to be played. We had an initially excellent idea that we would play pin the nappy on the baby. It remained an excellent idea up until the point where we realised that neither of us could draw a baby. Or a nappy for that matter. So we came up with the next best thing...

Hell's yeah. I had a great time one afternoon and evening, drawing and cutting out lots of sperm and drawing happy faces on them. This was not to just be a fun game however, it was also going to be educational. You might be able to see in the picture above that sperm have Xs and Ys written on them.

Here comes the science bit for those of you who don't remember your GCSE biology. Those spermy boys are either made of X chromosomes or Y chromosomes. The egg is an X chromosome so the sex of your baby will depend on which spermy guy gets through - an X and you have a boy, a Y and you have a girl.

So we would be having fun but also potentially guessing the sex of the baby. Fun and educational? Sign me up!

We also asked everyone to bring in a baby photo of themselves so we could play a little guess who game. This became a completely random guessing game as it was virtually impossible to tell who was who from their baby photos. Apart from two exceptions - the older ladies at the shower whose baby photos were in black and white, and yours truly who really hasn't changed all that much in 27 years...

The final game you will be pleased I don't have photos of. This game was most certainly not my idea because I don't have the strongest of stomachs. There were 5 nappies prepared and in each of those nappies was a different melted chocolate bar....you see where I'm going with this one? Have you already pulled a face and gone "Eurgh!" You are more than forgiven because I felt the same.

But it was actually pretty good fun, although I sucked at it because chocolate bars are not my forte. Although the Malteser one was pretty easy to guess.

Games over and prizes given out to those who won it was time for presents. I was looking forward to this bit because this was the moment that I would proudly hand over the Jungle Ripple blanket to my friend. I wanted to push my present to the front but I held back and passed over some other presents. The first present my friend opened made my heart sink a little bit. It was the most beautiful knitted shawl, which had been made by an old family friend. I wish I'd taken a picture of it actually because it really was lovely, very traditional, in white, lovely stitches.

It made me want to cry a little bit.

They say that pride comes before a fall and here was my fall. I wanted to push the Jungle Ripple blanket under the table and not let her open it, next to this beautiful shawl it looks garish and amateurish and very inelegant. But before I could think of a way of disposing it, my friend was opening it.

She thought it was brilliant and came up to me later to say how much she loved it, because it was bright and colourful and that it would most definitely be used and that she really appreciated the effort I'd gone to. I still felt a little subdued and rightly so. Lesson learned. Don't be smug.

All in all it was a huge success. She was duly surprised and her waters didn't break which was a bonus. Now we just have to wait until around the 20th August when Squib is due to arrive...