I just received the most laughable baby shower invitation. I know this post is going to sound incredibly malicious but honestly, infertile or not, I think I just vomited in my mouth a little bit. I mean for starters, there are not one, but two ridiculous poems! One in the body of the email, and then a separate one on the photoshopped invitation attachment (which by the way has pictures of half naked babies falling out of the sky). I would cry if I wasn’t so busy laughing. I’m sure – well, I think – humour was the sender’s intention, but unfortunately I am laughing ‘at’ and not ‘with’. Sorry.
On top of that it costs $50 to attend the baby shower, which I personally think is disgusting. You should not have to pay for a baby shower, no matter how much champagne there is, since of course we will be expected to bring gifts as well (this part is fine). The poems also mentioned games such as guessing the sex and weight of the baby so basically this is one of those occasions where my so-called condition – which will undoubtedly and embarrassingly make me burst into tears if I have to watch the mum-to-be unwrapping cute outfit after cute outfit – is the most perfectly valid excuse not to go. This is something that even two years ago, when I was still blissfully ignorant of my infertility, would have made me want to smash my own face against a wall. I hope my bridesmaids are smart enough to not throw me an event so vapid as to charge people to attend (I know they won’t).
The people I am close to who have had babies have had ‘showers’ that are really just outings to the park or the pub or at home, where men are more than cordially invited, and there are no stupid games (and this from somebody who loves games), and everybody celebrates the fact that you have managed to do this beautiful miraculous thing, which is grow a new human. It should absolutely be celebrated. Just, you know, with some sense of taste (or without, depending on how you look at things). I feel the same way about engagement parties – for sure, celebrate the fact that you’re in love, but is the massive party with speeches and elaborate gifts really necessary when the exact same group of people is just gonna do this whole thing again for your wedding in a few months? I mean, I agree with new parents being given gifts to help with the financial burden of getting set up for a new baby, the same way that newlyweds get gifts for their new house together, and that these things have significance from who is gifting them. I guess what I’m saying is, there are ways and means of doing these things.
Besides all that, it is on the same weekend as my birthday so damned if I’m going to spend it going goo-goo over booties. Sorry Katie. I have made you a blanket, though, filled with more love than something bought at Seed (which is not to bag Seed as they seem to have really nice stuff, but you know what I mean). I will drop it off the night before the shower, and give my apologies for not being in attendance for the real thing. But honestly, after just spending this whole post bitching about how stupid modern baby showers are, this is really not a bitter diatribe about what I don’t have. I just hate this kind of thing in general. It really is. Which totally makes it better, right?*
*I know the answer is “no it just makes you a bitch” and I am totally okay with that. So there.
whatvioladidnext 