Baby Shower - North American Style

A Newcomer friend, Lori, is due to have her third baby boy in early July, so there was a nice baby shower on Sunday for her hosted by other Newcomer friends. Interestingly enough, baby showers are not common over here in England or Sweden, so I would guess they are not common on the mainland either. Elin said in Sweden, typically friends/family members come to visit you at the hospital or at home and bring you gifts then. But they don't have showers/parties ahead of time.

All the attendees at Lori's shower are Newcomer's and are from North America (I think a fairly equal mix of Americans and Canadians). So we had a proper baby shower for her and she really appreciated it. Her two other children were also born abroad, so she's never had a baby shower. What's great is I haven't had a chance to get to know Lori very well, but we'd visited a couple of times, and it didn't really matter, since that's what's so great about the Newcomer's club. Everyone is supportive of one another and like to get together, even if you're not really close friends. It doesn't matter too much!

Sherry, who is American, hosted the shower at her semi-detached home they are letting (renting) from another British couple. It's furnished with all very nice and new furniture and appliances, and the biggest excitement at the shower was to see an American-sized refrigerator! Now this might sound funny to you, but the standard British fridge size is the about the size of a regular American freezer (the small space on the top.) So the ladies were all admiring the large fridge and wishing it would fit it their tiny flats!

We ate some Mexican snacks (another North American appreciation), played some games (I had to guess baby food flavors, and they were British concoctions!) and she had some fun Oxford gifts to open.

What I really enjoyed was a feeling of doing something "normal" or at least "familiar" by attending a baby shower. Sounds a little funny, and not that I've attended many, but maybe it was the company of North Americans, doing something North American that was really comforting.