There are only two gift-giving occasions in a person’s life that I know of where one isn’t merely permitted to select all of one’s own swag, but is actively encouraged to do so.
The occasions, of course, are when you announce to the world that you are about to have lots of legal, conjugal sex, and then again when you broadcast that all of your heroic efforts have paid off. (And even though these two events often occur within a few years’ proximity to one another, isn’t it mind-boggling how quickly your material wish list can change? One day, nothing suits your lifestyle more aptly than an assortment of cut-crystal serving platters and enough martini glasses to liquor up a dozen of your dearest friends. The next day, you’re in the market for plastic sheet protectors and a state-of-the-art rectal thermometer.)
The crazy thing in each of these instances is that you really can choose anything you’d like. I’ve seen leaf blowers, stepladders, massage gift certificates and blue chip stocks on various wedding registries, and once, a $23,000 “playhouse”—complete with running water, working interior and exterior lights and a flat-screen TV—on a baby registry. (I hope they liked the burp cloths we got them!)
Unless you are wealthy beyond any reasonable measure and the only thing you truly need for your unborn child is a play structure that is more elaborately equipped than the average American home, I would suggest registering for the necessities. This isn’t a simple task for a number of reasons, the least of which being that it is difficult to determine what your needs will be before you actually have them.
My expecting friends Mariaelena and Stewart recently drove forty miles to the nearest Babies “R” Us because, well, babies are them so obviously they have everything people who are about to birth a small person could need. This turned out to be true—and then some.
“We walked around in circles for two hours with the little scanner thingy,” Mariaelena confesses glumly.
“Why are there forty-seven different kinds of highchairs?” Stewart demands. “And why do they range from thirty to three hundred dollars? Don’t they all do the same job?”
Why indeed.
Feeling like they needed to fulfill their stated mission, Mariaelena and Stewart registered for…a sheet. One solid white, standard-issue, cotton crib sheet. Then they went out for ice cream. “I just couldn’t handle the pressure,” Mariaelena admits. “It was overwhelming.”
The alternative to registering for baby stuff is not registering for baby stuff, which is a wonderful idea for folks who need seventy-two receiving blankets, the default off-the-rack baby gift.
So you need to register, which in the past necessitated at least one but in all likelihood several trips to your local baby superstore, each of which is only slightly less enjoyable than having your teeth scraped. But thankfully, we live in the electronic age. Expecting parents now can sit in the comfort of their own home—where one of the two can enjoy an icy malt beverage and neither is forced to wield a scanner thingy—and choose the items with which they will soon be showered.
You basically have two options when it comes to registering online. You can do weeks or months of painstaking research until you nail down the top-rated product in each of the zillions of baby-gear categories. Or you can let a perfect stranger do all of the bothersome legwork for you.
Here’s how it works: Type “baby registry” into a Google search. At the time of this writing, you will receive slightly more than seven million matches by doing this, but you’ll probably only actually visit three or four thousand of them, so don’t be overwhelmed. Click on one of the biggies—say, Target or Amazon—and then pretend you are searching for a pregnant friend’s registry. At Babies ”R” Us, for instance, you need only a last name to see someone’s list. Type in Smith or Roberts and you’re bound to strike registry gold.
As you peruse your “friend’s” list, many of the items may be meaningless to you. “What the hell is a ‘Velboa Snuzzler?’” you’ll wonder, and justifiably so. Just keep scanning. After five or six you’ll begin to notice some overlap. “Hey, Abby and Jerome in Illinois are getting the Original Wonder Bear with Silkie Trim! Karin and Josh in South Dakota want that, too!” You’ll soon get to the point where you realize that the Sure Comfort Deluxe Newborn-to-Toddler Tub is clearly the only way to go, and that only morons aren’t lining up to buy the Express II Microwave Steam Sterilizer with Auto-Timer Plus.
A word of advice: Be sure to register at one of the mega-stores with generous return policies, because it might be four or five years before you are organized and energized enough to return the 137 things you will never open/use. The bright side of this is that by then, you’ll probably have another two or seven kids, and although you will no longer care whether your follow-up offspring have fluffy new blankets or stylish, gender-appropriate clothing, the store credit will come in handy for the truckload of diapers they’ll go through each month.
Happy shopping!
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