*This took place in early February, before social distancing.
Great news, I’m not the only pregnant lady in the friend group! One of Jeff’s coworkers is expecting in early March. Like in every culture, there are traditions around the arrival of babies and baby showers in Germany. For one, they don’t do baby showers.
The belief is that its bad luck to celebrate a baby who isn’t in the world yet. Instead of showering the mother or couple with gifts BEFORE the baby is born, they wait until AFTER. Then everyone, on their own terms, visit the new baby and parents at the house where the new mother serves her guests beverages and cake. Yes, you read that correctly…the NEW MOTHER serves beverages and cake to the guests, who come whenever they want! Um…no.
Luckily for us, she allowed us to throw her one classic “American Style” baby shower!
Since the couple decided not to share the baby’s gender, we decided on a Woodland Animal theme. We also decided against some of the traditional baby games (How big is mom’s belly, What’s in the Diaper? because one is degrading and makes the mom feel like cr@p and the other is just gross) and instead played Baby Jeopardy, Guess the Gummy Bears, and a Diaper Raffle.
One of the things I love about our expat family is that we are all in different walks of life and are all from different places. Some attendees to the shower are grandparents and have done this sort of thing numerous times while others are young professionals and this was their first time attending a baby shower. Needless to say, a good time was had by all. Baby Jeopardy was a huge success with categories including Baby Animals, Disney Movies, Baby Trivia, Things Found up a Toddler’s Nose, and Baby Babble. All teams were given a dry erase marker and board to provide their answers. I’m happy to report that the new parents team won!
Our gift to the soon-to-be new parents was a diaper cake & grooming kit. This was my first time making a diaper cake and it won’t be my last. It was fairly easy once I had all the supplies.
