My Baby Shower Recap
Let me start by saying I’m writing this from my hospital bed. If you have been following my journey on social media, you know I was admitted to Howard County General Hospital on November 29th, after my third bleed caused by placenta previa (more on that included in my second trimester recap), and we will be here until Baby Eberhardt makes her grand entrance! My extended hospital admission came just two weeks after I was able to enjoy the most perfect baby shower – in fact, I sent my “thank you” cards from this bed, too. I’m excited to finally share the details of a day filled with so much love for me and Baby E.!
As anyone celebrating in the time of COVID knows, planning is much more complicated. We decided to do partially in-person, partially virtual (using Zoom), in a restaurant setting where health and safety protocols would be required and met – plus, we booked a private room made to hold 80 people, giving us plenty of space to spread out. My shower was on November 14th at Eggspectation, and just days before, group gatherings were limited to 25 people indoors, again, but luckily that only meant asking one of our in-person guests if she wouldn’t mind switching to virtual.
The setup couldn’t have been better – we were able to stream the Zoom meeting to the TV in the restaurant’s private room, so it felt a little more like everyone was together! I wanted to create a fun, festive backdrop for virtual guests, so I ordered a balloon arch (a $40 Etsy steal that is now sold out), balloon pump and a colorful mixture of balloons to create my own rainbow balloon arch. Baby E. doesn’t know it yet, but she will be getting a balloon arch at every one of her future birthday parties!
Each table was decorated with flowers and complete with DIY cupcake hand sanitizer and individual pens (thanks to my friends at Kupcakes & Co.) for game purposes.
I’m not really into shower games, so with that in mind, my best friend, Kelly, planned two I could get behind (and that were social distance friendly) – a candy guessing game with jellybeans in a baby bottle, and a “guess who” game where facts about me and Brad as babies were listed for guests to decide who each fact corresponded to. In a crazy fashion, my mom won the candy guessing game with an answer just one jellybean shy of the bottle! There were 1,018 jellybeans total, and my mom guessed 1,017 simply as a nod to my due date, January 17th. Lucky guess, Grandma!
To make the hand sanitizer favors, I purchased 2-ounce plastic bottles and filled them with a mixture of unscented hand sanitizer and cupcake essential oil. They were finished off with some ribbon and a custom label, designed by me.
Eggspectation allowed us to offer a special event brunch menu with several options for guests to choose from, and the food and service were FANTASTIC! But the real show (or shower?) stopper was dessert. No party of mine is complete without Kupcakes & Co., whose beautiful cupcakes matched my shower invitation design perfectly.
We went with brunch-inspired flavors to compliment the main courses, including: Mimosa, Blueberry Pancake, Salted Caramel Latte and Strawberries & Champagne.
Decor was kept pretty minimal since I was already on modified bed rest, but I did frame photos of me and Brad as babies, along with Baby E.’s latest sonogram photo at the time. Majority says they think she’s going to look like me (based on her sonogram profile), but we’ll find out soon enough!
"You are so precious to me, sweet as can be, baby of mine."
-Dumbo
Thank you so much to everyone who made my baby shower such a special memory despite this crazy year! To all who helped plan, contribute, setup/decorate. To those who attended (in-person and virtually), and those who couldn’t be there, but sent gifts anyway. We are so grateful for your continued generosity and support! Baby E. is so spoiled and loved already…and it looks like she’ll be the sweet little rainbow we needed to end 2020.
