Today was a very special day

We had a baby shower for the founder of our infertility support group, K. It was actually a combined baby shower/ Fertility Babies group and it was very well attended.

It was the first baby shower I'd actually looked forward to and it was lovely.

I still had the text message on my phone from when she found out she was pregnant. I remember I was right in the middle of the bath/ bedtime craziness and I remember thinking what a Big, Awesome God we serve because this baby is truly a miracle. No IVF, no treatments, no medication, nothing.

She often tells me I inspire her (because we both have that same fear of needles and I had my 2 IVFs) and I feel exactly the same because she faithfully hosted that infertility support group for 2.5 years now while women were falling pregnant left, right and centre.

We've had about 28 babies born in the group (can't remember exact numbers) and I know I couldn't have done seen all that happen without losing it.

It's always so interesting to see how different everyone is in their mothering style - K mentioned wanting to get a bottle warmer, about 3 of us said, "waste of money" and others said, "oh, absolutely get one".

The one thing that has saved us TONS of time with our babies is not warming milk, even in the dead of winter. A tip I learned at the multiples seminar that has stood me in good stead as I never had a baby screaming because it wanted warm milk, just because I was too slow :)

It was lovely to see everyone again and catch up on everyone's stories.

However, my dear husband D said to me when I got home, "why did you want to take the babies with you? No one cared that they were there and it's not fair to set them up for rejection like that"

My heart broke.

At least they were only there 15 minutes but still... this emotional stuff is hard.

He said if people want to see them, they should visit us like my one friend, R, did just before the meeting. R had some magic going on because Connor was laughing like crazy with her - such fun!

Very true.

Anyway, it was still a lovely day and at least the baby shower happened WHILE she was still pregnant. She's about 39 weeks now!

When K phoned me during the week, I saw her name come up on my phone and first thing I said was, "K, are you still pregnant?" LOL

What do you have planned this weekend?

After church tomorrow, we'll do more of what we did last Sunday - go play outside and let the kids eat stones and get dirty! And yes, that's a fake dog and the only one I'll be having until they're old enough to take care of an animal themselves :)

I really hate to moan but...

I bought some baby stuff for a colleague's baby shower next week by email catalogue.

Is that what you call it when you get a brochure emailed to you and that's how you place your order?!

Anyway, turnaround was fantastic - only two days (and I ordered 7 items all in all - 4 for my kids and 3 for the baby shower) before I got the email saying they'd posted it.

Another 3 days from CT and it was here.

Excellent.

Only thing is I'm really not happy with the quality because of the amount I paid.

If I'd bought them at a shop, I'd have taken them back - no question!

But because it was posted I'm hesitating... and obviously I really don't feel like getting into it with the ladies...

I know I'm not happy and I even feel like I need to get my colleague something else as it doesn't feel right to give her those things. She is a person who is very generous and likes unique and different things which is precisely why I thought to get her something special (not the usual Woolies/ Edgars stuff).

Also, I'm happy-ish with 4 of the 7 items. Is it worth paying the postage and going through all that drama to get a refund? Then again, what would I do with the stuff?

I also love it when people show entrepreneurial spirit and do something with their passion so I hate to put a dampener on things...

What do you think? What would you do?

P.S. If memory serves me correctly, about 5 of my real-life friends were sent the email at the same time. Let me know if you ordered and if you liked your stuff!

Baby shower 2 - the work one

The work baby shower happened on Monday morning at 9am. Apparently it was the only time they could get our entire team together.

The good thing about the work one is that it was scheduled like a meeting so it's got to be short and to the point, we invite the boys so there's no funny business and there are a lot more people so everyone can get on with it and entertain one another :)

So this is what it looked like when I arrived: balloons, food and presents





Then we got down to the serious business of opening the gifts. My colleague, P, was assigned the task of writing down what each person had given.

I only read the tag on the scrapbook album properly when I got home and in addition to this, K also gifted me with a night nurse for one night and 3 meals. Do you know how exciting that is for us? We are super-excited! And it's clutter-free :)

All the gifts in the boot (trunk) of my car

Of course I took some balloons home with me - that's my ceiling. We live in an old house with these pressed ceilings and wooden floors.

Just to give you an idea of stuff we got - are those little slippers not the cutest things ever?!

We also got some cash and a gift voucher from two of the guys so I can get things we really need but don't have.

Do you think it's weird to use my boss's money for a breast pump? I don't think there's anything wrong with it but my hubby says that's just too weird.

I spent yesterday afternoon writing out 16 thank-you cards and I did it! Sore hand afterwards but all done! Some were really very long, like the ones for the two organisers.

My one colleague was up until midnight making those chocolate party favours and apparently on Friday, they had to wait for me to leave work (I was late because I like clearing my entire inbox on a Friday - I hate coming back to "old" work on a Monday morning - drives me nuts!) to package everything beautifully.

That really, really touched me because it was all done for ME!

I'm so glad those are over so I can make my list of items still outstanding that we actually need, and go get them.

Baby shower 1 - the personal one

Well, my emotions were very mixed with this whole baby shower thing.

First of all, I don't have very many close friends and no family here (which is great - no family drama!) so I only had a list of about 14 people to invite, 5 of which were from the infertility support group.

So we were going to be 10 altogether (that includes the hostess and me) but on the day I had 4 cancellations because of sickness (it's winter here so 3 of my friends had the flu and one had a family thing).

I was seriously dreading it at this point for many reasons:

• Tried to focus on the positive which for me was seeing old friends (said old friends were no longer there)
• My friend, A, got in so much food and I felt bad for her
• There is just more pressure socially the fewer people there are

So here am I just before we left...

Here's my friend, A, who hosted the baby shower

What it looked like:
I LOVE BALLOONS - they instantly make me smile

This was my favourite gift because I'm a bag person and this nappy (diaper) bag had a gazillion pockets :) Got this one from my MIL (that's her in the background)

This is my friend, C, who has gorgeous twin girls


Opening up presents - look at that slope - no more b**bs, just belly!

Something that completely overwhelmed me (but I didn't cry*) was people's generosity!

There was a lady there (I'm not posting the rest of the people because I don't know if they want their pics all over the internet!) who I hadn't seen for about 2 - 3 years. When she heard I was pregnant and having twins, she was so excited and said she wanted to come. She bought a gift bag full of stuff for each of the children!

People bought tons of things for each child - it's amazing to me that other people care so much about my children and I suppose I also feel guilty because I haven't been to baby showers for at least 4 years, probably longer, and I feel like I don't deserve to be blessed with such great gifts.


So this is my brainwave - how to remember who gave which gifts.

I laid each gift out on a butler's tray and took pics like this. I'm still going through the pics and saving them by person's name. Isn't that a good idea?


So aside from there only being 6 of us, it was lovely. Low-key, no funny business and a nice time of food and friends :)

But when I got home, I don't know what happened and I got all emotional and started crying. It was crazy.

I think it started because my husband told me no-one introduced themselves to my friend, C, and I didn't either. I felt SO BAD because I'm normally very good at making sure everyone gets on and knows one another. Well, that set me off! Of course, when I apologised to her, she didn't have any problems with it but still!

I put it down to the pregnancy hormones even though this is only the 5th time I've cried since I've been pregnant. Cry 1 & 2, Cry 3, Cry 4 :)

Wrote out all the thank-you cards for this shower and two other people who gave their gifts beforehand so I felt like a rock star :)

Dreading the baby showers

My baby shower is tomorrow - I think there will be 10 of us altogether - and then I have a gigantic one at work on Monday with about 30 people. Actually, I've read about really big ones of 80 - 100 people but 30 is gigantic for me.

I've never enjoyed baby showers because the way they do them in South Africa is they dress the woman up like an idiot a baby, complete with nappy (diaper), etc. and play stupid games (guess the present and if you guess wrong, you have to do a "forfeit" like eat a horrible concoction). Ughhh. I shudder at the thought.

I'm not very frivolous so once I decided that I actually hate these things, I just started saying, "thanks very much but I don't go to baby showers; however, I'll drop off a gift with ________ afterwards" which was working beautifully. Even if people thought I was strange - that really doesn't bother me in the least.

Then of course I was infertile so in addition to the stupidity, I also felt a physical stab in the heart whenever I heard about baby showers, wondering if I'd ever have a baby of my own.

I don't think much has changed because I still feel infertile.

But now, of course, I'm having two babies which definitely means baby showers.

When my friend asked me if she could host one for me (knowing how I feel!), I told her yes, but only on my terms. So there'll be no dressing up, no surprises and no weird games. Just open up presents, eat food and talk.

We do the work ones like meetings so there's no time for faffing around with games and what-not (thank God) but they do like the surprise thing. So I jumped in and told the person most likely to organise it that I want NO surprises as I don't want to go into premature labour just because some people want to have a bit of fun.

So they eventually told me the date and time :)

But still...I am feeling the dread.

On the other hand, though, I can't wait for these to be over so I know what I can go buy because my poor babies' room still looks like this... and I need to cross some things off my to-do and to-buy lists while I still have some energy left.

So, do you all love baby showers or what? How do they do them in your part of the world?