If you called to tell me you were having a baby, or if you Pakistani-style already had the baby and never warned me of its impending arrival, this is what I would give you as a new baby welcoming gift.
Mostly, I like to give baby gifts of the variety "things I wish someone had told me sooner so I hadn't spent months searching for." My favorite thing in this category is the book "The Happiest Baby On The Block" by Dr. Harvey Karp. It puts forward a newborn-soothing plan that really worked well for our family. In college, I took some child development classes and on of my professors said that adolescence, as a developmental stage, is something parents just have to get their kids through in one piece for it to have been a successful developmental milestone. I kind of feel that way about babyhood. Sometimes I liken that stage to heroin withdrawal, actually, where methadone sedation through the worst withdrawal effects can impact success in future recovery efforts. As long as you keep them calm, keep them well rested, and get them through it and to the other side with as little stress as possible, you might be able to shape their temperament into something easier to deal with.
Most of this wholly unqualified theory is based on my sample size of one - my son. I think the techniques we used with him as a baby helped him mellow down into the mostly calm and easygoing kid he is now. I could be wrong, he could have been born with that temperament and it could've just been the luck of the draw, but just in case I'm right I usually give the book to new or expecting mothers I know. If the baby's already been born, there's a DVD version I give instead. If I've procrastinated too long and the baby's pretty much out of newborn stage, I skip it alltogether.
If it's someone I REALLY like, I include my favorite swaddling blanket, The Miracle Blanket. Or as we affectionately call it, the baby straight jacket. Now this is something I really wish someone had told me about earlier. Our kid used to wiggle out of his swaddle in the middle of the night so many times it was maddening.
I even remember when I first stumbled across The Miracle Blanket because it was in the middle of the night. The baby had gotten up one too many times and M and I were up - he was trying to hand-sew two swaddling blankets together, thinking that length was the problem and I was Googling combinations of the words extend swaddle, six month old, and ohmigod please somebody I need slleeeeeeeep. And there, I found the Miracle Blanket. We never even bought one ourselves, actually, we just used two thin swaddling blankets to recreate the same effect, but I still buy it for gifts. It goes hand in hand with the book, because one of the books main points is a good swaddle.
Other things I give are my favorite baby products. Here's my list of possibilities:
Avent pacifiers, clear: Avent makes a completely clear pacifier, though they're hard to track down. I liked them best because they screw up pictures slightly less. Instead of some monstrosity in the face of your precious baby in every picture, it almost disappears. Well, not really, but at least it's LESS of a monstrosity.
Vibrating baby toys: when my son was a baby, I kept one of these on me at all times. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to hear crying babies, so I've always tried as hard as I could to keep my kid quiet in public spaces. Of course, he does sometimes cry in public, but these vibrating bad boys would always shut him up in an instant. Just pull the string, press it up against his neck, and watch his face go from indignation to "What the hell was THAT?!" instantly. Worked like a charm every time.
BabyGap socks: Baby feet have some magical pair to reject and maneuver out of every pair of socks put on their tiny Houdini like feet. A certain kind of BabyGap socks - not the cuff one - was the only, only kind I could get to stay on for any length of time.
Zipper-only pajamas: before our son was born, we bought all these one-piece outfits based solely on how cute they were. Who could resist the siren song on the pajamas with tiny tools and 'Daddy's Little Helper' on them? Not us, that's for sure. But then the baby comes, and then 4am comes along with a dirty diaper and you're stuck buttoning and unbuttoning thousands of tiny buttons in the dark, looking at those words on your helpless child and thinking resentfully that what would really make him a little helper would be if he'd straighten his legs for a freaking second. So, we learned quickly - zippers only! No matter how cute it is, unless it's zippered you don't want it! We always liked the ones they sold at The Children's Place.
Straw cups: I first read about this way back before I even had kids on Cagey's blog Rancid Raves. She mentioned never having gotten her kids sippy cups and instead moving them straight to straw cups. What stood out to me in my non-child-having days was that she said she never had to bring along any special cup/drink after her kids had reached that stage. Instead she could go into any place of business and get a regular straw and her kids could drink anything. It stuck with me, and I did it with my own kid. It took me a long time to teach him how to use the straw cup though, and later I also read a method for squeezing a juice box a little into their mouths so that they get the idea to start sucking. If I've procrastinated past the point of sending a gift while the baby is still a newborn and the Dr. Karp book isn't useful anymore, I include straw cups instead. Got to get that unsolicited child rearing advice in there somewhere!
Formula Carrier: Most of the moms I know had some difficultly with breastfeeding, so they at least some powdered formula in their diaper bags. If I know a mom is going to be using formula, I usually include these formula cups. I saw a lot of moms with this three serving behemoth, and I know that space in a diaper bag is never enough. I had these little single-serve containers I liked a LOT more and they are really, really hard to find. Lots of people would stop me a playgroups and asked where I'd found them because they were so small, so convenient, and could even be used with only one hand.
Sunblock: Sunblock's not supposed to be used on new babies, but I found one called Blue Lizard that was supposed to be usable earlier than most, and it was rated as among the most effective in a study I read about how most sunscreens are misstating their effectiveness. It's also something that's really hard to find so I give it to new moms sometimes. It's usable younger because it's a physical sun barrier - zinc, I think - not a chemical one.
Lastly, this wouldn't be a post on my blog about intercultural marriage if it didn't somehow tie in with that, right? A lot of the people we know having babies are Pakistanis, and I always like to include something special in those cases.
First, I often include Urdu books. When I was still only a few weeks pregnant, my husband went to Pakistan alone and in his excitement, came back with hundreds of kids Urdu books that all costs a few pennies each. Some were stories, some where school books for preschool and kindergartners. He even had 1st grade handwriting and science and math books for his only-weeks-old fetus! There were some duplicates, and over time we've found newer and better quality books - those were bought from the guy on the next corner from his house and are not really great quality. But they still make great gifts, I think, and you can never start too early for language acquisition, right? Plus, I think a new parent seeing old stories they used to read in Urdu might feel happy and nostalgic about sharing something of their childhood with their own child, too.
Kurtas for kids: I like to send baby clothes if I can, if I have some new ones lying around. I try to keep plain white baby-sized shalwar kameez for boys just in case, but girls clothes are harder to shop for. Or maybe I'm just boy-biased. (I am, I admit it.) For a close friend I might include a traditional vest and hat decorated with tiny mirrors - they're just so cute! I asked my MIL to bring some on her most recent trip for a close friend of M's who had a baby, but it somehow got left out of the bags. My FIL brought it though, so I'll post a second package of just baby Pakistani clothes.
Card with name in Urdu: If the kid's Pakistani and has a Pakistani name, I'll ask M or Dulhan to write it out nicely. Sometimes, especially if a Pakistani kid is born in America, maybe the parents haven't even seen the name written out in Urdu yet. I mean, of course they've seen the name in their lifetime, if they grew up in Pakistan, but it's something different to see it AFTER you've had a baby and named it - that's now YOUR KID'S NAME. I know that I'd thought about my son's name in theory but the first time I saw it written out, it seemed like a magical use of letters, and that was in English, a script I see, read and write every day. For Urdu speakers, who might miss Urdu in their daily lives, I think it's a nice gesture. I also have done this for non-Pakistani friends of mine who are particularly interested in worldly type things as well. I haven't always done this, though, especially when the name would have been difficult to spell in Urdu.
There are other things I sometimes get too, a particular kind of thick bid for the stage when a kid's whole shirt gets doused in drool, a plastic-y bib for transitioning to solid foods, a favorite kind of disposable table liner, a few other options, but these are pretty much my favorites.
Also, I paid for all these things with my own money, no one asked me to review or compensated me at all for these comments; absolutely none of these companies or websites I linked to even know I exist and I get not a cent from them even if you click over and buy thousands of clear pacifiers. Which you totally should, your friends will thank you!
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| My (hypothetical) gift to you! |
Most of this wholly unqualified theory is based on my sample size of one - my son. I think the techniques we used with him as a baby helped him mellow down into the mostly calm and easygoing kid he is now. I could be wrong, he could have been born with that temperament and it could've just been the luck of the draw, but just in case I'm right I usually give the book to new or expecting mothers I know. If the baby's already been born, there's a DVD version I give instead. If I've procrastinated too long and the baby's pretty much out of newborn stage, I skip it alltogether.
If it's someone I REALLY like, I include my favorite swaddling blanket, The Miracle Blanket. Or as we affectionately call it, the baby straight jacket. Now this is something I really wish someone had told me about earlier. Our kid used to wiggle out of his swaddle in the middle of the night so many times it was maddening.
I even remember when I first stumbled across The Miracle Blanket because it was in the middle of the night. The baby had gotten up one too many times and M and I were up - he was trying to hand-sew two swaddling blankets together, thinking that length was the problem and I was Googling combinations of the words extend swaddle, six month old, and ohmigod please somebody I need slleeeeeeeep. And there, I found the Miracle Blanket. We never even bought one ourselves, actually, we just used two thin swaddling blankets to recreate the same effect, but I still buy it for gifts. It goes hand in hand with the book, because one of the books main points is a good swaddle.
Other things I give are my favorite baby products. Here's my list of possibilities:
Avent pacifiers, clear: Avent makes a completely clear pacifier, though they're hard to track down. I liked them best because they screw up pictures slightly less. Instead of some monstrosity in the face of your precious baby in every picture, it almost disappears. Well, not really, but at least it's LESS of a monstrosity.
Vibrating baby toys: when my son was a baby, I kept one of these on me at all times. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to hear crying babies, so I've always tried as hard as I could to keep my kid quiet in public spaces. Of course, he does sometimes cry in public, but these vibrating bad boys would always shut him up in an instant. Just pull the string, press it up against his neck, and watch his face go from indignation to "What the hell was THAT?!" instantly. Worked like a charm every time.
 |
| The DVD, the swaddling blanket, the vibrating toy and the clear pacifiers. |
Zipper-only pajamas: before our son was born, we bought all these one-piece outfits based solely on how cute they were. Who could resist the siren song on the pajamas with tiny tools and 'Daddy's Little Helper' on them? Not us, that's for sure. But then the baby comes, and then 4am comes along with a dirty diaper and you're stuck buttoning and unbuttoning thousands of tiny buttons in the dark, looking at those words on your helpless child and thinking resentfully that what would really make him a little helper would be if he'd straighten his legs for a freaking second. So, we learned quickly - zippers only! No matter how cute it is, unless it's zippered you don't want it! We always liked the ones they sold at The Children's Place.
Straw cups: I first read about this way back before I even had kids on Cagey's blog Rancid Raves. She mentioned never having gotten her kids sippy cups and instead moving them straight to straw cups. What stood out to me in my non-child-having days was that she said she never had to bring along any special cup/drink after her kids had reached that stage. Instead she could go into any place of business and get a regular straw and her kids could drink anything. It stuck with me, and I did it with my own kid. It took me a long time to teach him how to use the straw cup though, and later I also read a method for squeezing a juice box a little into their mouths so that they get the idea to start sucking. If I've procrastinated past the point of sending a gift while the baby is still a newborn and the Dr. Karp book isn't useful anymore, I include straw cups instead. Got to get that unsolicited child rearing advice in there somewhere!
Formula Carrier: Most of the moms I know had some difficultly with breastfeeding, so they at least some powdered formula in their diaper bags. If I know a mom is going to be using formula, I usually include these formula cups. I saw a lot of moms with this three serving behemoth, and I know that space in a diaper bag is never enough. I had these little single-serve containers I liked a LOT more and they are really, really hard to find. Lots of people would stop me a playgroups and asked where I'd found them because they were so small, so convenient, and could even be used with only one hand.
 |
| This is better than... |
 |
| ...this |
Sunblock: Sunblock's not supposed to be used on new babies, but I found one called Blue Lizard that was supposed to be usable earlier than most, and it was rated as among the most effective in a study I read about how most sunscreens are misstating their effectiveness. It's also something that's really hard to find so I give it to new moms sometimes. It's usable younger because it's a physical sun barrier - zinc, I think - not a chemical one.
Lastly, this wouldn't be a post on my blog about intercultural marriage if it didn't somehow tie in with that, right? A lot of the people we know having babies are Pakistanis, and I always like to include something special in those cases.
First, I often include Urdu books. When I was still only a few weeks pregnant, my husband went to Pakistan alone and in his excitement, came back with hundreds of kids Urdu books that all costs a few pennies each. Some were stories, some where school books for preschool and kindergartners. He even had 1st grade handwriting and science and math books for his only-weeks-old fetus! There were some duplicates, and over time we've found newer and better quality books - those were bought from the guy on the next corner from his house and are not really great quality. But they still make great gifts, I think, and you can never start too early for language acquisition, right? Plus, I think a new parent seeing old stories they used to read in Urdu might feel happy and nostalgic about sharing something of their childhood with their own child, too.
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| Urdu books for kids. The one on the right is an alphabet book, the wolf one is a storybook. |
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| The only picture I could find of the kind of embellished waistcoat for boys I was talking about, from an earlier blog posting. |
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| Also, a gift reciept, for those who might not like unwanted baby advice. |
Also, I paid for all these things with my own money, no one asked me to review or compensated me at all for these comments; absolutely none of these companies or websites I linked to even know I exist and I get not a cent from them even if you click over and buy thousands of clear pacifiers. Which you totally should, your friends will thank you!
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