My husband called me about a half hour ago and told me that friends of ours became parents for the first time on Saturday. When I saw Glenda a few weeks ago I asked her what she needed for the baby, and she said she had everything - she had 4 different baby showers!

Since their little girl has everything she needs, I want to get a gift for her and her husband but I'm not sure what to get. I would get them a gift certificate for a resturant that delivers, but I think the only place around that does deliver is a pizza place. Can anyone think of good post partum gifts?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Answers

Gift certificate for maid service!

Or maybe a good kid's book. Or picture frames. Or massage supplies.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Do they have a bath tub? Gift certificate to Lush. Lush also offers gift packages, maybe one for romance or lovers, perfect for when they get some downtime after those first few busy months.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

If your area has kozmo.com, I vote for that. They will bring groceries (some), cds 7 books, video tapes (including rentals), magazines, food, diapers, tampons, etc. to you in under an hour.

I thought I saw a kozmo gift certificate option. Try it! If they have a 'puter, then it will be the best thing ever. Kozmo is also around 24 hours a day...

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I always buy a huge pack of diapers, cloth diapers to use for spit ups, and bibs for the baby because you can never have enough of them.

If you want to buy something for them, how about a really nice photo album or scrapbook?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

I think Gwen's maid service idea is fantastic -- I don't have a kid, but I would kiss somebody who bought me a free hour's worth of all the cleaning shit I hate hate hate to do.

I've never had a kid, but I think food and drink always makes a good present. Get a nice picnic basket and fill it with a bottle of wine and loads of excellent food.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

One can never have too many extra diapers or baby food. And formula, if she's not breastfeeding. Diapers and formula are very expensive, at least the quality ones are.

I like the maid idea, too. Or if you cook well, make your best dish and freeze it in those toss-away containers. Most new moms don't have time to make anything yummy, and eating fast food gets boring quickly.

Videos or DVDs would be good too, especially for when you're sitting around for an hour waiting for the baby to finish the bottle, or it's 4am and you need to the baby to go back to sleep and the only things on tv are infommercials.

I also let my kids use pacifiers when they were babies. There's a lot of stigma and controversy among parents who do and don't allow this, but I bet if she's planning on using them, she'll need more, because they're always getting yucky or lost, or the cat finds them and starts batting them across the kitchen floor in the middle of the night...and if she's not, sneak one in her bathroom cabinet for the night that she's finally going apeshit and goes to get the Valium and instead finds the pacifier.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Thanks for the ideas!

When I spoke to her, she told me that she had 38 washcloths and 50 bags of diapers, in various sizes. She also has about 25 onsies, and 6 huge bottles each of baby shampoo and soap. She just looked at me and said, "There is nothing that my baby needs that I don't have. I can't find space in the house for all the stuff I have."

Maybe the maid idea is the best one - Merrymaids can find space for all that stuff!

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

It's probably a little late in the game to suggest this, but for future reference..

A group of friends of mine and I got together to give a mutual friend an investment in this longterm educational fund. We all spent about $28 a piece..by the time it matures in 18 years (tax free that whole time), it's supposed to pay out over $125,000 for the baby to use for college.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

I always get something totally frivolous for the mom, like cashmere socks. Or a gift certificate for a pedicure. But the maid service sounds like an excellent idea, too.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

my default baby gift: The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease, and a selection of baby books: a board book, a classic like Runaway Bunny, something else that strikes my eye.

unless they have the book already (in which case they can return it or pass it on), they *don't* have everything needed for the kid, I think.

Anita of Anita's BOD and Anita's LOL

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

The mother is a teacher, and being that one of the showers she had was from all her teacher friends I'm sure she has a nice library.

I'll definitely get something small for the baby, but I really wanted to treat the parents. Thanks for the baby gift ideas, though.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Every baby and parent needs a copy of the book The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Or maybe you could offer some nights of babysitting. I had no one to babysit for me when my kids were babies. I definitely could have used a few nights out sans baby.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Babysitting is an EXCELLENT idea. Maid service sounds good, too, but I'm always hesitant to let strangers see exactly how messy we are. Even paid strangers.

One of my favorite, unanticipated baby gifts was plastic storage containers. You know, those big things from Rubbermaid. You have no idea how much stuff you accumulate with a baby, and how often you have to change it out for new stuff. Pack it in those big boxes, and it's ready to be shipped off to the nearest pregnant relative in no time.

Oh, and someone also gave me these huge, Sam's Club-sized containers of baby laundry detergent. I was profligate with it, and washed everything in it, and only found out later how expensive that stuff is.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Totally off-topic, but I still feel the need to say this:

Y'all don't feel bad about maid service. I had this friend whose mom worked as a maid. I took the opportunity to ask all my pressing questions. Did her mom look down on or get grossed out by messy people? Did her mom get mad or offended if people sat there and watched TV while she cleaned? My friend said, "My mom doesn't give a fuck." And she told me several anecdotes, none of which suggested that her mom hated her employers. The main gist was, "And my mom would do the same thing if she could afford a cleaning service."

So don't feel bad. Maids don't care.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Thanks for the tip, Gwen. Everyone I've ever known who had cleaing people come over and work for them always cleaned like crazy before the people arrived. I could never understand it. This reminds me of a book I keep meaning to read, called Other People's Dirt. It's a memoir...guess what it's about!

We have cleaning people who come help out at my store 4 mornings a week before we open. They are all black and most of us booksellers are white or hispanic. I know there is a not so subtle tension or disdain on the cleaners' part. Like, I always say Hi to them and I don't always get a response. I try realy hard to be friendly and normal, like I share donuts that I've brought for my coworkers, but it's still weird. I feel that the cleaners totally resent having to clean up after our customers, like me & my coworkers are "too good" to do it ourselves. It's strange and sad, how pronoounced the division of labor is here in Texas. The little town I grew up in in Kansas had a pretty good sized Hispanic population, and they all had the same jobs as anybody. But here in Texas as often as not I go in a restaurant and see this: The hostesss are white women, the servers and bartenders are white men, the people working in the kitchen and bussing tables are all hispanic men. God, I am sooooooo far off the original topic now. Do forgive me.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Fantastic ideas everyone! I especially like the plastic container idea! Why didn't anyone do that for me, dang it!

On maids: I worked as a maid through college, mainly at motels and bed & breakfasts. I also occassionally had house-cleaning gigs, including cleaning for payment on portions of my rent. I cleaned for this one lady whose house was already clean, damnit...and it was sort of insulting. I can't speak for all cleaning professionals, but it made me feel like I was just wasting my time...vacuuming the clean rug, scrubbing the the clean bathroom, dusting the spotless furniture, cleaning the sparkling windows, etc. I didn't get any satisfaction from the work, except for maybe making my OWN patterns in the carpeting with the Hoover, and maybe making the stack of mail or books just a little more symmetrical on the desk & nightstand. Even at the hotel, I much preferred going into rooms that were *trashed* -- where people had moved furniture, left every towel on the floor and just basically twisted the whole place up. It's like I would take before & after pictures in my mind, and it was so incredible to me that I could work such magic!

Okay. I also had a manic fixation on housecleaning until I had a kid. I now am much more relaxed -- and messy. But I still think that it must annoy other house cleaners to be spending their time cleaning something that isn't dirty, and thinking "what? just because you can *afford* to have a maid you just *have* to have one? I could be cleaning some pig's house!"

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000