The Truth About Baby Shower Party Favors People Actually Want

I was standing by the industrial trash can at the local VFW hall last weekend, double-fisting a lukewarm sweet tea and a paper plate of dry sheet cake, watching my cousin's friends secretly dump their party gifts. They were doing that subtle little slide-and-drop maneuver, trying to bury the customized pink plastic baby rattles filled with stale Jordan almonds under a pile of used napkins. It was tragic, it was hilarious, and it happens at literally every single celebration I attend.

The biggest lie the internet ever told us is that your friends and family desperately want a permanent, physical reminder of the Sunday afternoon they watched you open breast pumps. They just don't. And I'm just gonna be real with you, the aesthetic pressure on millennial and Gen-Z moms to provide Instagram-worthy parting gifts is entirely out of hand. We're exhausting ourselves buying junk to impress people who are honestly only there for the free pimento cheese sandwiches and the mimosa bar.

Nobody wants your due date on a keychain

When I was pregnant with my oldest, bless my heart, I thought I needed to commemorate the event like it was a national holiday. I spent three weeks hand-painting tiny wooden blocks with his initials and our exact due date. I run a small Etsy business out of my house here in rural Texas, and I basically had to put my actual paying customers on hold while I inhaled paint fumes trying to make sixty identical blocks. It cost me a small fortune, my living room looked like a craft store exploded, and I'm pretty sure my own mother threw hers in the goodwill pile by Thanksgiving. He was born two weeks late anyway, so the date was completely wrong.

I literally make my living selling things to people online, but I'll be the first one to tell you to stop putting your unborn child's name on koozies. Nobody wants to drink a Miller Lite at a summer barbecue out of a foam sleeve that says "Baby Braxton 2024." It's awkward for the guy holding the beer, it's a massive waste of your budget, and it's going straight into a landfill the minute they clean out the floorboards of their truck.

Don't even get me started on DIY bath bombs, because frankly nobody has the time or the mental stability to clean that glittery, oily mess off their kitchen counters right before hosting thirty women.

My grandma's two dollar rule

My grandma always told me that a thank-you gift for a guest should be sweet, small, and completely gone by tomorrow morning. I happen to think she was dead right about that. The etiquette police will tell you that you absolutely have to provide a favor, but if you look at the actual numbers, you really shouldn't be spending more than two or three dollars a head. When you multiply a ten-dollar custom candle by forty people, you've just blown your budget on wax when you could have bought diapers.

If you want to save your sanity and your wallet while actually making people happy, just hand folks a nice bag of local coffee beans or a little jar of local honey with a regular paper tag and call it a day without overthinking the Pinterest aesthetic. Consumables are the only things people actually want to carry to their cars. If they can eat it on the drive home or drink it the next morning, you've won the day.

Splurging on the game winners instead

I started a new tradition in my friend group a few years ago where we skip the massive pile of cheap trinkets by the door and just buy four or five really good items for the baby shower game winners. Rather than spreading a hundred bucks across thirty useless items, buy three thirty-dollar prizes that people will actually fight over.

And let me tell you, women get absolutely cutthroat over a Walrus Silicone Plate. I usually buy a couple of these to use as the top-tier prizes for the diaper-guessing game. Let me tell you a quick story about why. When my oldest was about eighteen months, we had what my husband now refers to as the Great Spaghetti Incident. I was literally scraping noodles off the kitchen ceiling fan while the dog hid under the sofa. That's when I discovered heavy-duty silicone plates with suction bases. This walrus one is my absolute favorite thing we own because the suction is genuinely aggressive and the little divided sections keep the peas from touching the mashed potatoes, which is apparently a federal offense in my house. The moms at the shower will literally tackle each other to win one of these, because any parent who has dodged a flying ceramic bowl knows the street value of good silicone.

The bulk breakdown method for better gifts

If your mother-in-law is breathing down your neck and you're dead set on everyone walking away with something in their hands, the smartest thing you can do is buy a bulk set of high-quality items and just break them apart. You don't need a custom box for everything. Just roll things up nicely and tie them with a piece of cheap garden twine.

Last spring, I hosted a small sprinkle for my sister-in-law and I bought a stack of these Organic Cotton Baby Blankets in the Pear Print to roll up and give to the grandmas and the close aunts who helped set up. I'm gonna be completely honest with you here, the bright yellow pear pattern is just okay for me. I'm much more of a muted, woodland-creature aesthetic kind of gal, so it wouldn't be my absolute first choice for my own kids' rooms. But for a bright spring shower favor? It worked totally fine. The older ladies loved that it was real organic cotton, and since we just rolled them up with a little handwritten thank-you note, I didn't have to spend five hours assembling tiny organza bags of mints.

Wait, what about the main baby show event?

Sometimes these parties turn into a whole baby show, with massive balloon arches that cost as much as a mortgage payment and rented vintage peacock chairs. If you're throwing one of these giant events, you can honestly use the main group gift to replace your table centerpieces and your favors all at once.

Instead of spending two hundred dollars on floral centerpieces that are going to die in a hot car, have the hostesses pool their money for a beautiful Wooden Baby Gym in the Wild Western Set. You set this gorgeous wooden A-frame up right in the middle of the main gift table or the food buffet. It has this little wooden buffalo and a crocheted horse hanging from it, and it looks incredibly high-end and rustic all at once. It gives the guests something beautiful to look at and talk about while they eat, and honestly, the mom-to-be gets to take home a stunning piece of nursery gear instead of twenty leftover plastic bottles of cheap lotion. If you're trying to build a registry that seriously makes sense for your life, checking out a collection of sustainable, organic baby items is a million times smarter than registering for a wipe warmer you'll literally never plug in.

A quick note on skin and mystery rashes

My pediatrician was looking at my middle child's weird leg rash one afternoon last summer, and she kind of offhandedly mentioned how a baby's skin barrier is basically Swiss cheese for the first few months. Like, their skin just absorbs everything it touches and loses moisture incredibly fast, which I guess is why they get so flaky and red all the time when you put them in cheap clothes. She mumbled something while looking at her clipboard about chemical residues on cheap fabrics and artificial fragrances in soaps causing half the mystery rashes she sees in her clinic every week.

Ever since she said that, I've been incredibly paranoid about the stuff I give out at parties, especially if there are other moms of little ones in attendance. If you decide to ignore my advice about the coffee beans and you buy a bunch of cheap soaps or heavily scented lotions to hand out, just remember that the moms in the room probably can't even use them. Anything loaded with artificial fragrances is just going to trigger a massive eczema flare-up for someone's toddler. Stick to natural fibers and unscented, boring stuff if you insist on giving a physical item.

Let's wrap this up before the baby wakes up

Look, I've got a laundry basket full of tiny socks staring at me from the hallway, so I need to wrap this up. The moral of the story is that nobody expects you to bankrupt yourself or lose your mind over parting gifts. Keep it simple, keep it consumable, or just ditch the concept entirely and buy better game prizes. Your friends love you, they're excited about the baby, and they truly don't care about the customized koozies.

If you're looking for gifts that won't end up in the VFW trash can, take a minute to shop our full collection of sustainable baby essentials before your pregnancy brain completely melts down.

Answers to your late-night etiquette panics

Do I absolutely have to give people something when they leave?
Honestly? No. Your younger friends won't even notice if there isn't a table of gifts by the door. But I'll warn you that the older generation—your aunts, your grandma's friends—will absolutely look for something because that's just how they were raised. If you've a mixed crowd, a bowl of nice wrapped chocolates by the exit is enough to keep the older ladies from gossiping about your manners.

What if my budget for this is practically zero?
Then you bake. Buy a couple boxes of cheap brownie mix, make a massive batch, cut them into squares, and wrap them in whatever wax paper you already have in your kitchen drawer. A homemade brownie says "thanks for coming" way better than a one-dollar plastic pacifier necklace ever could.

Are those little seed packets a good idea?
People love the idea of "watch our baby grow" seed packets, and they're incredibly cheap. I think they're fine, but I'm going to be honest, I leave them in my purse for six months and then throw them away because I can't even keep a cactus alive in my house. But at least they're biodegradable, so I don't feel guilty about tossing them.

When should I really order this stuff?
Don't wait until you're 36 weeks pregnant and your ankles look like baked potatoes. Order your consumables or your game prizes about a month before the shower. If you're ordering things that have to be assembled, do it two months out so you can force your husband to tie the little twine bows while he watches football.

What if I invited way too many people and ran out of things to give?
Smile, say thank you for coming, and wave goodbye. Nobody is going to call the cops because they didn't get a bag of coffee beans. You're about to have a newborn; you've much bigger things to worry about than running out of party favors.