“And so it begins!”
It has started, my friends. I had my first-ever trek to the maternity ward to visit a post-C section friend. My former manager Melannie just gave birth to an amazing baby boy, and my sidekick Caitlin and I were beyond excited to head down to Ottawa General and welcome him into the world.
Babies, you guys. Oh man. My ovaries pretty much exploded.
(Also…does anyone else get REALLY nervous when holding a baby? I mean, sometimes I can throw enough PR spin on my clumsiness to make it charming, but I don’t think there is anything “charming” about dropping a newborn. Holding the kid was amazing [recall: ovaries exploding] but also completely and totally terrifying. Yet another “how do nurses do this?! They must be wizards.” moment.)
The reason I write about this for a Home-style post is to share the gift that Caitlin and I came up with for this lovely momma.
Melannie is a foodie hailing from the East coast, so it wasn’t surprising that she openly missed some of the foods that are unsafe for baby-carrying. Think about it: seafood, cured meats, cheeses, alcohol, eggs…it’s all a no-can-do for the cautious pregnant woman. And for the cautious foodie pregnant woman, that makes for a pretty long nine months.
….actually, I think the whole “carrying another human being around in your stomach” thing also makes for a long nine months, but for the sake of this post: THINK OF THE CHEESE!!
So Caitlin and I set to work on a gift basket of foods that she had avoided for so long, but could now enjoy post-pregnancy.
Here are all the foods Melannie had to avoid during her pregnancy:
- Pregnant women are supposed to avoid raw or soft-boiled eggs. Also, we had to get quail eggs because…they’re a thing you can get.
Of course, we grabbed some celebratory wine and Guinness, the ever-classic Momma’s milk.
There were two major challenges in the making of this gift:
1) How do we openly discuss which foods to NOT give a pregnant woman, then purchase said foods, without looking like we are trying to damage a pregnant woman?
2) How do we wrap this stuff up in the middle of the mall, armed with only ribbon and cello from the dollar store?
(The answer to #2 is by being as awkward and resourceful as humanly possible. Fun fact: cursing out quail eggs DOES in fact make you look like a crazy person.)
But in the end, of course, we had an awesome foodie gift basket and were set to welcome a new little man into the world…and make sure his momma didn’t have to go one more day without some good Guinness and salmon!
Happy birthday, newbie!
Shaunanagins 
As a mother, I never give new moms flowers; I was give food. I try and give food that you can only eat with one hand–other hand is full of baby. I also often call to ask if they’re craving anything in particular. It’s usually something hot as hospital food is frequently tepid at best. So take out surrounded with lots of newspaper for insulation and the floor heat set to nuclear on my vehicle takes care of it cooling off.
So thoughtful! Great idea with the newspaper insulation.