While we're celebrating Christmas with our families, we bring you this relic of Christmas past. I believe this is the only original podcast episode we put out on Christmas Day way back in twenty nineteen.
Welcome to Round three of the Parenting Roundabout podcast for the week of December twenty third. I'm Catherine Aleco and I'm here with Terry Morrow Hello, and Nicole Eerdix.
Hello.
We're moms of teens and young adults, and when it comes to parenting, we've been there, done that, bought the T shirt. But we're still waiting for that day when we'll reach the finish line and have no further need to lay down in a dark room with a wet rag over our eyes worrying about something or other. So Wednesday is complaint Day here on Parenting Roundabout, and we do not even take time off from complaining for Christmas.
We today are going to talk about a recent article in the Washington Post that talked about the need to update the baby Shower. It says new parents need childcare help, meals and groceries, therapy, social support. Steer your friends and family toward helping with support costs instead of shelling out money for top of the line new stuff like baby stuff. Yeah, so in this season of gift giving, is this a good idea? Like do we just want to hand over a little onesie and be done with it or as
we do? Yeah, I mean as a as a giver, I probably would, but as a new parent, I definitely would have. I mean, you do need stuff, you absolutely write stuff. But yeah, getting help is really important too. Like one thing that they talked about in this article, like right at the baby shower set up the like meal train for bringing food when the baby comes, which I think is pretty think that's a good idea because anybody who brought me food when I had babies, I was extremely grateful.
My question with that is who is coming to this baby shower, because I've recently been to a baby shower for somebody who doesn't live near me. She's a daughter of one of my husband's cousins. I see her only at weddings and showers. I don't even know where she lives, but I'm pretty sure it's not in meal toating distance movie, and I don't know that she would want a meal
from me random relative she barely knows. So this assumes that you have a warm, personal baby shower with your immediate friends and relatives, and then it's fine, but I don't want to just I mean, I guess if they said, here, go to this GoFundMe page and chip in for a lactation consultant, okay, be easier than getting a gift card for a baby place, which I probably we would be doing. But at least here in New Jersey, baby showers have a sort of a broader guest list, you know, than
what they seem to be talking about here. And also, I'm not sure now I've never I had an adoption shower, but I never had a baby shower. How much do you, as a young person having your first baby, say, know what you're gonna need in the way of support. Yeah, you know, some people might need a lactation consultant, some people might not, Some people might need a night nurse, some people might not want it.
You know.
It seems like what it's gonna be is some older relatives saying, now, honey, you're gonna need this and this and this. You don't need that fancy baby stroller that you want. You don't need all those clothes, you need this and this and this and it's like, what fun is that? You know, A for some lit lashy presence.
I think this woman was talking about her shower from the perspective of being a mom and knowing what she would have needed, but when she was actually having that, if she would have been psyched to get this stuff, I don't know, right.
Well, I really liked what my son's friends did for their wedding this past summer, and they they did a combination. There's a site, I think it's I don't know, Tie the Knot or something, but where they can put down, you know, physical items that they want and experiences or services that they want. So and I like that option by registry basically yeah, yeah, it was like a registry yeah and so, and you could just like donate money
online and they would get the money and somehow. But see, for me personally, like I would prefer to outsource and have the you know, like say, for example, an Uber eats gift card or because I feel like, well, there's definitely a trend that's moving away from collecting stuff and there's kind of like that whole reuse, recycle, upcycled kind of stuff, which in some cases is good and not
so good. But I feel like when it comes to these personal items, like, yeah, we there's a registry, but then you know, like I feel like new parents want to choose exactly what they want, right, So I would like to have the option of getting services and yeah, because I think that has like just as much value.
Yeah, if it can be done in a really sort of generalized way. But it's like, you know, you may what did they I'm not sure what they mean by like experiences, but like for some families, it might be cool to have, you know, a membership to a museum or a trip to Disney or whatever. But then you have your baby and it's premature or it's got special needs or whatever, and then you need a whole other set of experiences. Where's my gift card for a speech therapy?
Can I have a gift card for you know, a uber you know uber to the hospital and back to visit my kid in the NICU. It's it seems like, if you're going to do it this way, maybe what you want to do is have the shower after the baby is born, when you know specifically what you wish you had, give the new parents a month and then throw them a party.
That's what we did. I had. I had my baby shower when some was a month old. Yeah, and then.
That's also a better way to do a shower or a celebration for a second or third kid.
Yeah, you know, because then you do by then you do know, you do know, and you don't have a lot of stuff. Yeah, you know, you don't really need stuff. But if people brought you like frozen.
Meals and you know, diapers, and yeah, here's all the days that I can take your older child to the park or whatever like that sort of stuff is I think even more when it's subsequent child.
Definitely. I had Actually, after my daughter was born, I had a I hired a doula, like a postpartum doula. Oh my god. That was the best thing. One of the best things about having a child was being But it was expensive and I couldn't afford to have her all the time. But it was so nice to have just somebody come in and yeah, you know, fulsome clothes, or help me with you know, something that was going on,
you know, change a diaper. I don't know. It was just a really nice kind of a support service kind of thing that was recommended to me.
So kind of the type of thing that like a family member might have done if you had one nearby, you know, right.
Yeah, exactly. So I like the option of having and it being socially okay to give alternate forms of gifts, right because I think we just get stuck in this traditional Oh yeah, I got to give a baby blanket.
But where else would you like that to expand to? Could we do that with like Christmas gifts? All the things that are under trees. As people are listening to this podcast, are they looking at them and going, what are really rather had, you know, a trip somewhere, or if we could take all the money from this stuff that people gave me that I didn't want and they could have just bought me a maid, Yeah, I would like, you know, or or a day at something or a you know, path.
I kind of charges this year. I was like, We're going to take the money that we spend on your gifts and put it towards a family experience because I I am so over buying them stuff that they can typically get themselves that we could get for them, or.
If they're my husband, that they just buy.
Yeah, they just gone by and it doesn't and whatever I get my husband, he doesn't want anyway, so right, so we I just said, yeah, we're going to take that money and put it towards something as a family. So yeah, that's what we're doing. A good idea this year. I always have so much trouble with Christmas. Yeah, they're older. That helps also, you know with Christmas presents. And then my husband's birthday is in January, my son's birthday is in March, and my daughter's birthday is in April. So
it's a lot in a short period of time. And my son, as I've said before, often can't decide what he wants, and so then I'm getting him like double at his birthday.
Because I can. So this year, we're going to try something new, which is just we're each member of the four of us is going to buy the other three something with a maximum price of ten dollars. So we're just going to have a very small, little fun from the heart sort of a gift exchange on the day, and then you know, anything that I had thought I would get them for Christmas, I can get them for
their birthdays because it's coming right up afterwards. So I don't feel like anybody's getting slided that much, and they don't really, it's not like there's a ton of stuff. They're not little kids with their eyes full of toys. It's like sometimes pulling teeth to get something to do. So, yeah, we're all just going to go to this one place that has you know, stuff, and we're just all going to you know, buy some little trinket for each other.
We'll see how that goes. It may be maybe next year we'll do something some sort of experience or buy some streaming service for everybody and that'll be that. But it does, you know, the gift giving, especially with the older kids, it does get kind of diminishing returns. Mm hmmm.
Yeah.
I mean, I my daughter this year with her skating team, has so many expenses, Like there's all this clothing and just supplies and you know, a special backpack like all this stuff that we have to buy, and I'm like, can I please just put that under the Christmas tree because mine is ending a lot. Yes, So I just yeah, and she gets it, like she would be fine with that.
But a lot of it, you know, I didn't necessarily have by Christmas, or I had it way before and you know, or her coach distributed it like, yeah, you know when they got it, and so it wasn't working that well.
But you just write it all out on a card. You put a bow on the card and put it under the tree and say, look at all the stuff I got for you. Pretty much, Well, there should be a better way. And certainly I think everybody who goes to showers and everybody who gives gifts for anything else wants the thing to be as useful as possible, you know, not and fairly easy also, but not something that's going to turn out to be an unnecessary expenditure of funds.
So maybe this sort of trend will be helpful eventually. But I'm still not going to cook meals for somebody I see twice. I I don't think they would, while I wouldn't cook the meals my husband meals. But interesting ideas.
Happy holidays, and we'll be back tomorrow with our discussion of shrinking Last Drink, which is season two, episode eight, and as Terry mentioned yesterday, it will make you cry yes.
Or possibly drink yes unless you are Paul. Thank you for listening. You can find all our episodes on spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find recaps, links and an opportunity to comment on our website at parentingroundabout dot com.
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