I had been hesitant during the Baby Shower prep. Our close friends had taken on the job of setting up the shower for us. Noelle wanted us to include and invite both female and male friends. I did not know that men went to baby showers, and as I thought about the process it allowed me another opportunity to be involved in a time that the father is usually just along for the ride.

Our friends Tracy and Liz asked me for a list of family and friends who, I would like to invite and I began to wonder, “Who would like to come to a baby shower?”  Most of my guy friends would not be into missing a Sunday afternoon during football season and others just would not want to attend anyway. So, I gave my list of email addresses and just assumed that I would be mostly consumed by the feminine energy the day of.

The day finally arrived and my mom flew in to attend. She came with me early in the day to help Liz, Tracy, Agnes and Israel set up the party. I prepared a non-alcoholic punch along with a rum punch and other spirited and N/A beverages.

As I had throughout the first 5 months of pregnancy, I focused the zero ABV punch on Noelle’s pregnancy cravings and dietary essentials. Papaya, tangerine, strawberry, lime, and basil had become one of the winning combinations to help with morning sickness early on and I had made many combinations of this list.

We had gotten a tip about ripe Papaya being helpful with morning sickness. It seemed to work. As I began to explore, however, I saw that green papaya is actually not good got pregnancy. It was becoming clear to me that there were many things that were suggested that women do not eat or drink during pregnancy. In a normal “Mocktails” book I do not think they account for pregnancy, just no alcohol.  Even when we would go to restaurants, I would see amazing bartenders not want to or just not know how to mix a mocktail. I wanted to test myself and so I started making recipes, I came up with 40, one for each week of pregnancy.

As the day went on and friends and family began to arrive, I felt overjoyed and overwhelmed. Noelle and I began to feel all of the love that was pouring over us. People do love supporting those that they love and I had never realized just how powerful that could be for someone or a couple in need of a little help.

We played creative games, had a diaper raffle and enjoyed amazing food and drinks. In a funny turn of events, we had frozen tiny plastic babies into ice cubes and when guest got a drink they put one of those cubes in their glass. When the baby had melted out of the cube the winner was to shout, “My water broke.” Well it just happened that our friend Amber, who was 8.5 month pregnant was the first to melt and someone yelled, “Amber’s water broke!”  He face immediately turned bright red.

I refilled both punches multiple times and it was a relief to hear friends who were pregnant or just didn’t want to drink say that the N/A punch actually made it feel like they could still enjoy the party and not have to just drink soda water.

After opening a load of presents, Noelle and I were officially overwhelmed with the love we had received! It took me several days to comprehend that the village we had feared that we did not have around, had shown up when we just needed to feel the love.