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How to Celebrate Your Baby Shower During Quarantine

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It’s important to make memories and honor a friend or loved one who is expecting a baby. During the COVID-19 quarantine and the stay-at-home order in place, you may need to get creative. Below are some great ideas on ways to celebrate.

Invitations

Even though the shower is virtual, it still needs a proper invitation! If you’d like to send an invitation digitally, check out invitations from Paperless Post, Minted or Evite. If you’d like a paper invitation, try Amazon or Etsy.

Host a virtual baby shower

It’s no surprise that the days of video conferencing are as normal as an in-person hangout with friends. We live a lot of our lives online. Shopping, working and socializing with friends has occurred on the internet for years. There are several platforms to host a virtual shower. Some of the most popular platforms are Facebook and Zoom.

  •  Facebook logistics
    • First, assess if all your guests have Facebook. If they do, make sure you are friends with all of the expecting mothers’ friends, or ask the expecting mother to invite everyone she’d like to attend. You can also send Facebook messages to your guests before starting the virtual shower to remind them. If you decide to host a live shower, you’ll likely want to use the Facebook Messenger video chat capabilities.
    • As the host, are your Facebook Messenger video chat skills up to par? As the host, it is important to know the ins and outs of video chat so that you can be a resource for others. Check out this guide. Be sure to set the video chat to “private” so you aren’t sharing these intimate moments with the rest of the Facebook world. After your video chat is complete, it will be shared to your event’s page so that anyone that was unable to attend can watch.

If you’re nervous about having too many people in one virtual video, try creating several separate videos. For instance, video chat with the expectant mother’s family on Saturday at 10 a.m., chat with the family of the father-to-be on Saturday at 2 p.m., and chat with close friends on Sunday at 11 a.m. This helps with the overlap of conversation and creates for a more intimate experience.

Decorations

Although everyone cannot be together, the expectant mother can still have decorations! The host can mail a pretty backdrop to the expectant mother to decorate the wall behind them while opening gifts. It’s an easy way to make the day festive for those watching!

Gifts

Loved ones and friends can mail gifts ahead of time for the new mother or couple to open during the virtual party. Be sure to include where you’ve registered on your invitation.

Share inspiring messages or parenting advice

Ask the guests to share any parenting advice they may have for the new mother or expecting couple. Even a few words of inspiration may help a new mom feel less nervous about having a baby. The host could even send out a stamped envelope for guests to return with parenting advice or an uplifting note! You could even set out a card box in front of the home of the parents-to-be and have people drop their card/cash/gift card in it! It would be a great keepsake afterward! Another idea would be for the host to send out little bags of chalk with a note included inviting the family and friends to write inspiring messages and parenting advice on the driveway for the couple to read later.

Digital slideshow

Ask the expecting mother and father for pictures of themselves as infants. Once you have all of the photos, try adding music and the photos to create a digital slideshow to share. A slideshow can be easily be created with SmileBox.

Guessing game

Even though the shower is virtual, doesn’t mean you can’t play fun games! Try putting animal crackers in a large jar. During the baby shower, have attendees try to guess how many crackers are in the jar. The winner could receive an email gift card or be mailed something after the party.

Drive-by parade

If you have a Facebook event, set up a date and time for family members to line up near the new parent’s home to do a drive-by parade! Try decorating your car with posters and balloons for extra fun!

Social distancing picnic

If you’d rather a smaller shower, make it casual and host a social distancing friendly picnic! Friends and family can meet up in a park, setting blankets over 6 feet apart to enjoy each other’s presence.

The information in this blog post is accurate at the time of publication. However, as the situation surrounding COVID-19 continues to change, it's possible that information has changed since being published. While Ochsner Health is trying to keep our blog posts as up-to-date as possible, we also encourage readers to stay informed on news and recommendations by using the CDC website.

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