So, your friend is having a baby, like, on purpose. Mazel! Naturally, you’ll be attending all the amazing parties for her and her spawn-to-come, from sip-and-sees to baby showers. But wtf does one wear to such an event? This may be your first baby-related celebration, so you want to look nice. But club attire isn’t appropriate, and you can’t rewear the same outfit you wore to her bridal shower (it’s the same people, and it’s already on Instagram).
Here are a few of our favorite outfits you can wear while pretending to support your friend not drinking for nine months.
Sézane Isidore Dress
Unlike weddings, you can totally wear white to baby showers. Since many showers are set for brunch or early afternoon, you also can wear this little number from Sézane in white without worrying about spilling red wine all over yourself. (No guarantees about mimosas, though.) Is this what adulthood feels like?
Ann Taylor Cozy Mockneck Sweater Dress
Do you want to blend in, be cozy, and hope to fade into the background of this shower without anyone asking you to hold a child or—gasp—when you’re hatching your own? Grab this sweater dress from Ann Taylor which looks and feels tailored, but is sooo comfy.
J.Crew Tiered Ruffle Maxi Beach Dress
Yes, it’s technically a beach dress, but this number in bright orangey red from J.Crew is festive, light, and perfect for an afternoon party. Plus, after the baby shower you can throw this on over a bathing suit and wear it during the summer.
H&M Crêped Dress
Do you really want to wear black to this baby shower but realize that that’d be like, not the vibe? This dress is your way out. It’s dark and muted, but it totally has a retro floral working to show everyone how fun and festive you are. Plus, a babydoll dress like this will allow you to eat your weight in canapés without having to suck in your gut.
ASOS JDY Midi Shirt Dress In Floral Print
God, we love a shirtdress. This one is perfect for early spring, when it’s definitely not warm enough for short sleeves just yet. The teal and pink floral combo makes it super adaptable in terms of accessories, and, although we wouldn’t necessarily wear sneakers with it, we feel like everything from flats to heels to sandals work with this.
ASOS Closet London Kimono Sleeve Midi Dress In Blush
Is your bougie friend having a bougie baby shower? Maybe it’s a high tea at a fancy spot in Midtown or an early dinner at a nice restaurant. Although that seems a little out of the norm for a shower, if you need something more on the fancy side, this dress from ASOS fits the bill. It’s modest, looks amazing with heels, and—bonus points—it’s pink if your bestie is having a girl.
Spell & The Gypsy Collective Amethyst Shirred Sundress
Thank you, Revolve, for keeping us fashionable regardless of the occasion. This floral off-the-shoulder dress is breezy enough for morning but cool enough to go into the early afternoon. It’s a little on the fancier side, but you could definitely repurpose this sh*t for a dreaded morning wedding, should you be so unlucky as to be invited to one.
Eliza J Faux Wrap Crop Jumpsuit
Are you cool enough to rock a jumpsuit? Of f*cking course you are! This green number from Nordstrom is super cute and polished, and can be accessorized with a chunky necklace and your disgust for all things kid-related. Plus, the color works for a trendy morning outing or late afternoon shower.
J.Crew Factory Tie-Waist Shirtdress
Finally, if you aren’t normally a fancy betch and don’t want to spend a ton of time or money on a dress you may or may not wear again, just cut your losses and snag this chambray dress that can be dressed up, dressed down, or thrown on the floor in a fit of rage, because honestly babies are exhausting.
Images: Jacob Lund / Shutterstock.com; Sezane; Ann Taylor; J.Crew; H&M; ASOS (2); Revolve; Nordstrom (2)
Betches may receive a portion of revenue if you click a link and purchase a product or service. The links are independently placed and do not influence editorial content.
Soooo your friend is pregnant. The time when you and your bestie can just soak up each other’s awesomeness alone is growing shorter. Soon she’ll be welcoming a baby into the pack, and you’re just going to have to learn to share. There will still be wine nights and happy hour and evenings you can’t remember, they just may be fewer and further between. In the meantime, though, she’s got a baby shower to plan, and you better be buying her the right sh*t.
We know she took weeks to put together her registry, and you should definitely buy her some of the stuff that’s on there, but here are the things your pregnant friends really want/need. Anybody can pick a gift off a registry; you will be a hero if you show up with some of this stuff.
Diapers
Pampers Swaddlers Disposable Baby Diapers
I never in my wildest dreams could have fully grasped the amount of diapers a less-than-15-pound human could go through. At roughly six to eight diapers per day (some days are 10, let’s face it), there is no limit to how many boxes of diapers I want stashed at all times. I personally thought putting diapers on our registry was tacky, but, my God, am I glad we did. A 164-count pack of Pampers diapers, size 1, will run you around $40 on Amazon; more if you buy them at a store. Buy two boxes of these and have them delivered to your friend. She will thank you when she (or her partner) doesn’t have to run to the local WalMart at 5am with the other psychos because, in their bleary-eyed state, they didn’t realize they only had two diapers left in the entire house.
Oh, and don’t even think about looking for cheaper or discounted diapers. We bought a certain celebrity-backed brand of diapers that were half the price of Pampers, and I still have sh*t stains on one of my blankets. That, and my son thought it was really neat that he could pee right through the back of them. It’s my personal belief that with diapers, you really do get what you pay for.
Wipes
Pampers Baby Diaper Wipes, Complete Clean Scented
Like diapers, wipes will be your friend’s best friend once she has a baby. From cleaning up countless spit-up situations to wiping off crusty fingers to, yes, truly getting down and dirty during diaper change time, wipes are the thing your friend will need multiples of, multiple times per day. Go ahead and order hundreds of these bitches for your bestie. I promise she’ll use them and thank you for them.
Fleece Footie Pajamas
Simple Joys by Carter’s Baby Boys’ 2-Pack Fleece Footed Sleep and Play
Tiny outfits with pants and shirts and skirts are like, so adorbs. But for the new mom running on roughly two hours of sleep, they just aren’t practical. The first few months I’ve been home with my son, he has LIVED in footie pajamas. They’re easy on, easy off, and easily changed when he has a blowout. They also are a one-and-done outfit, which can be layered or not. He’s warm, I don’t have to f*ck with socks or tiny pants, and he, like me, can hang out in loungewear all day.
Wine
So this kind of goes without saying, but your no-longer-pregnant mommy friend needs wine. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive or from a boutique winery. Honestly, showing up at her door with a homemade meal and two to six bottles of wine in hand will have her in happy tears. Grab your favorite bottle, ask when she needs to shower and have a moment to herself, and either show up and take the baby off her hands or leave the wine in her garage.
Nice Loungewear
Kindred Bravely Ultra Soft Maternity & Nursing Nightgown Dress
If your bestie is #blessed enough to have maternity leave, you better believe she’s going to be sporting a lot of pajamas and loungewear. Because bringing home a newborn kind of zaps your ability to dress up and look put-together, having loungewear that looks cute, fresh, and is super comfy is hella important.
The sets from Kindred Bravely (which are also available on Amazon) are buttery soft, comfortable, and look good whether you’re wearing them to bed or need to make a quick trip to Starbucks. The nightgown/dress above is cute enough to wear out with a cardigan or wear as a top with your stained sweatpants while hanging out around the house. I should know—I have it in three colors. If she’s more of a pants and top person, the Amelia Nursing & Maternity Pajama Set is a soft, cozy, quality option.
Nipple Butter
Earth Mama Organic Nipple Butter Breastfeeding Cream
Listen, I know it sounds kind of weird, but trust me. If your bestie plans to breastfeed, nipple butter will be her new normal. Whether she’s exclusively pumping, feeding, or doing a combo, her boobs are going to be a little worse for wear. Since you won’t be sure of her preference or the level of research she’s done, grabbing her an organic nipple butter without lanolin (which some say can be upsetting to a newborn’s tummy) like the one by Earth Mama is a great option. You could even grab her a few nipple butters, some nursing pads (her boobs will leak whether she’s breastfeeding or not), and some cooling gel packs for a nicely rounded kit.
Burp Rags
Not so glamorous, but so, so necessary since your friend may have forgotten to put the good ol’ burp rag on her registry. These are used for wiping your boobs after pumping, wiping your baby’s face after he’s spit up, for cleaning up water spilled on the counter while you only had one free hand, and for all the general grossness that comes with having a baby. There are no less than five of these within my reach at all times.
Also—aside from the physical stuff, one of the best gifts you can give a pregnant friend or new mom is a listening ear, conversation, and lots of support. Mommin’ ain’t easy.
Images: Giphy (1); Amazon (6);
Betches may receive a portion of revenue if you click a link and purchase a product or service. The links are independently placed and do not influence editorial content.
Let’s all agree to agree that gender reveal parties suck. Baby showers are also boring AF. Who wants to play games like pin-the-diaper-on-the-baby and watch moms-to-be open endless gifts of nipple cream and breast pumps? No one who has anything better to do with their time, that’s who! Well, there’s supposedly a new type of party in town that sounds much better. Goodbye, baby showers and gender reveals. Hellooo, pre-parenthood parties?
WTF Is A Pre-Parenthood Party?
According to Andrea Fowler, entertainment editor of TheBash.com, pre-parenthood or before-the-birth parties are “a celebration that’s totally focused on the parent- or parents-to-be to acknowledge this massive shift in their own life. The baby is going to get plenty of attention in due time anyway, right?” RIGHT. The parents are the ones doing all the hard work who deserve all the love and attention (and partying) before their lives are ruined changed forever.
Sara Raffa and Linden Ellis, co-founders of party supplies and planning company Coterie, compare pre-parenthood parties to a more enjoyable version of the traditional baby shower, but one that people actually want to RSVP yes to. “Baby-moons have been a thing for a while, but we feel like there’s a growing trend toward less of a shower and more of an ‘omg-I’m-having-a-baby-let’s-celebrate-my-last-days-of-freedom’ with your friends.”
Pre-parenthood parties are more commonly called “hatchelorettes“ and “Dadchelor parties.” These last hurrahs are mainly intended to give more credit to the parents (*cough* mainly the mom). “Nine months of pregnancy is no easy feat, and the baby isn’t exactly enjoying the party from inside the womb,” the co-founders said. Now that’s something I can get behind. I’d much rather celebrate my friend surviving pregnancy and the miracle of childbirth than a baby that’s about to take away precious time from me hanging out with her and getting a text back within a reasonable amount of time in the future. Oops—are my attachment issues and dislike of children showing?
Fowler also claims that these parties are gaining popularity because imposing gender-related stereotypes onto babies isn’t something a lot of parents want to do anymore, for obvious reasons. “Just because the sonogram paints a certain picture doesn’t mean it’s an accurate depiction of the baby’s identity.” And, in fact, “Jenna Karvunidis, the blogger who is credited with the first viral gender reveal in 2008, says she has mixed feelings about it today.”
Sidenote: In case you didn’t see Karvunidis’s new viral Facebook post announcing those mixed feelings, she mentions that Bee, “the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits.” CAN YOU SAY PLOT TWIST?
A weird thing came up on Twitter, so I figured I'd share here. Someone remembered it was me who "invented" the gender…
Posted by High Gloss And Sauce on Thursday, July 25, 2019
Are People Really Doing This?
So pre-parenthood parties sound great and all, but is this actually the newest (pre-)parenthood trend? Or is this just a new name for something that single friends of parents-to-be might get tricked into attending?
According to Daniel Levine, trends expert and keynote speaker, pre-parenthood parties are far from being mainstream, but the desire to celebrate the last days of freedom has been gaining traction on the internet. “The media creates a feedback loop whereby people actually have the celebrations they’re reading about. I’ve seen this same cycle happen with gender reveals, babymoons, and divorce parties, among other trendy events.” In other words, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Raffa and Ellis have experience hosting these parties, love the idea, and confirm Levine’s point. “We obviously aren’t historians but we’re definitely seeing a trend toward more people looking for more excuses to get together with friends and celebrate. This is especially true during this ‘pre-parenthood’ stage of life,” they said. “Life is about to go from late nights out with friends to late nights in changing diapers and losing sleep, so you want to get in all the fun that you can.” Fair enough. As someone who values her sleep and independence, I can respect that.
“From a trends perspective, pre-parenthood parties are not yet a thing—at least a popular thing,” says Levine. “But who knows? Maybe if enough breathless articles are written about them, they will start happening en masse.”
Well, count this as one of the soon-to-be countless breathless articles about pre-parenthood parties. It doesn’t seem like a real trend yet, but we’re definitely on board with celebrating the parents-to-be and not the babies-to-be, as long as the party has good food, a lot of alcohol, and is more fun than gender reveals and baby showers. We could totally get used to seeing moms thriving and dudes dressed in big baby costumes on our Instagram feeds. As Fowler says, “Ultimately, when you’re celebrating a big life milestone, it’s important to do it your way. Don’t be afraid to deviate a little from tradition and make your party something really special and unique to you.”
Images: Unsplash / Natalie Chaney, Facebook (HighGlossSauce), @katiejoythiele / Instagram
If you’re having a kid, mazel. If you’re having a kid and insist on throwing a giant gender reveal party, please exclude me from that narrative. Remember how there used to be a time where we didn’t have a party and Instagram photo op for everything? Simpler times. But thanks to social media, we just can’t have nice things anymore. Let’s just call a gender reveal party what it is: yet another opportunity for an expecting couple to squeeze more money, gifts, and Instagram likes out of their family and friends. Truth be told, the only time I will support a gender reveal is if it goes horribly wrong or is so tacky that I get the chance to roast it in my group chat or any one of the Facebook groups I belong to that’s dedicated to that specific purpose. I’m real fun at parties, promise. I’ve taken it upon myself to research the biggest gender reveal fails in the history of gender reveals (or, more accurately I guess, the history of the internet), and I’ve compiled them here for all the people who, like me, revel in the misery of others. I told you, I’m great at parties!
I want to thank God, I want to thank the internet, and I want to thank you, overzealous parents-to-be, for providing these absolutely golden gender reveal fails that are prime examples of what not to do when you’re expecting.
Here are my top (in no particular order) favorite gender reveal fails.
1. The One That Almost Burned Down A Whole State
This is, by far, our clear-cut winner of the worst gender reveal fails to ever happen. Expectant dad and Arizona resident Dennis Dickey fired a rifle at a box full of Tannerite, an extremely flammable explosive powder, mixed with a colored powder that would reveal the gender of the marksman’s spawn. Because of the amount of powder and the 40 mph winds, the Tannerite ignited a fire that burned 47,000 acres. The Sawmill Fire, as it came to be known, is expected to cost more than $8 million in damage. Dickey paid $100,000 upfront and will pay $120,000 in monthly installments of $500 for the next 20 years—costing more than his kid’s college tuition and general upbringing. Btw, it’s a boy.
2. The One With An Alligator
What do you do when the lady is preggers and you’re both trained alligator handlers living in Louisiana? Naturally, you grab a goddamn ALLIGATOR, fill a hollow watermelon with either pink or blue Jell-O, and invite the alligator to smash said watermelon, adorably revealing the gender of the future animal wrangler. First of all, why involve the alligator in this at all?? I’m sure he had better things to do that day. Second of all, if you actually watch the video, the whole reveal is actually pretty uneventful. Thankfully (and somewhat surprisingly), no one was maimed, but it was still one of the most redneck things to happen in history.
3. The One With The Wrong Balloons
This cute couple decided to keep things simple for their gender reveal, and asked a balloon company to fill a box full of helium balloons according to the gender (which the company knew and the couple did not). Somehow, these v simple directions were lost in translation, and the box was filled with rainbow balloons in every f*cking color. The balloon company even lost the card with the baby’s gender on it, so the couple couldn’t just tell the guests themselves! I love the absolute look of defeat on mom’s face.
4. The One That Sent Guests Screaming
A couple in Philly decided that shooting off fireworks for their gender reveal would make for an explosive time (kill me). Unfortunately, they shot the pink (yay, a girl) fireworks right into the crowd of onlookers, leading to a lot more running and screaming than most people expect at this kind of event. A few adult suffered some minor burns from this hilariously bad idea. This is why you need to have to pass some kind of test to be able to procreate.
5. The One That Didn’t Quite Nail The Delivery
Don’t leave your gender reveal in the hands of the greasy 17-year-olds hawking cheap pizza. This idiot couple learned that the hard way when they decided to spell out IT’S A over three pizzas, but it turns out that pepperoni and sausage do not great lettering make. It’s kind of close—if you tilt your head sideways and squint a little bit, you can kind of tell what they were going for. Guess this couple should have called the pizzeria from The Princess Diaries and used M&Ms instead of cured meats.
6. The One That Ended In A Nasty Injury
Yep. These Rhodes Scholars decided to shoot their gender reveal out of a cannon filled with colored powder. First, the cannon was homemade, which should tip you off to there being a problem (and that this couple probs shouldn’t have bred to begin with). Second, said homemade cannon jammed, and someone needed to hit it with a hammer to get it going. Thankfully, it wasn’t the mother-to-be, but it did result in a pretty cool injury.
Images:Victor Dueñas Teixeira / Unsplash; Joe Krummel, Alecs Strayer, New York Post, Arizona Daily Star / Youtube; teachingadventuresin3d / Instagram; Melody Kliebert / Facebook
For those of you who have been living under a rock, spent your Sunday hungover, or just came out of a coma, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian are in a huge fight. Kim and Kourtney’s fight is convoluted and figuring out WTF was going on honestly killed some of my brain cells. Luckily you have me to fill you in so you don’t have to do all the research yourself.
To recap, in last night’s season premiere of KUWTK, Kim and Kourtney had a major disagreement over the scheduling of their family’s Christmas Card photoshoot (this episode was shot in November, before you start @ing me in the comments). While Kim was putting a lot of effort to avoid conflicts with the whole family’s schedules, Kourtney didn’t seem to GAF. Kim then called Kourtney the “least exciting” to look at, which tbh is kinda true but super harsh and not really material to the scheduling issue at hand. Understandably Kourtney stormed out, and to make matters worse, it appears no one ran after her.
Khloé then called Kourtney on speaker to try and make peace, but Kim made like Trump on Twitter and basically blew up any chance for a productive resolution. Kourtney called Kim an “evil, distraught” human being and announced that she will “move to another state at some point, or another country.” She then later said that she “cannot wait for that day and hopefully just won’t have to have these fake relationships.” Wait, hold up, Kourtney said WHAAAT? These relationships are FAKE????!!!! What else has Hollywood been lying to me about??
While some viewers believe Kris Jenner orchestrated the whole feud to generate more ratings (probable), others are convinced their feud was genuine as Kourtney refused to attend Kim’s baby shower for Chicago. Kim hoped that Kourtney would put the feud behind her for the family event, but when she didn’t, Kim said, “So, I don’t think she’s big on family because if she was, she would be at my shower.”
Kourtney upon hearing this, probably:
Even though this feud happened months ago, it seems feelings are still raw, as the sisters went at each other last night on Twitter while reliving the fight on TV with the rest of us. We would be shocked to learn that this was just a PR stunt to get KUWTK ratings up and prefer to believe that Kourtney is, in fact, the sole Kardashian that slightly resembles a normal human, even if it makes her the most boring.
At the end of the day, we can’t feel that bad for any of the Kardashians as they’re making millions of dollars to fight with their siblings. The rest of us just do that for free.
Images: Giphy
