Finding a baby shower game that won't make your friends flee

Let’s start with the greatest lie ever sold to expectant parents, which is the idea that pre-birth gatherings are calm, sophisticated afternoons where close friends sit around in pastel linen, sipping herbal tea and bestowing quiet wisdom. If you've ever actually attended one of these events in the last decade, you know this is a fabrication. What usually happens is that thirty adults are locked in a room, handed lukewarm prosecco (or sparkling water, for the host), and forced to participate in a high-stakes hostage situation where your aunt Sheila makes everyone melt an ice cube with a tiny plastic infant hidden inside it.

I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about my mate Dave aggressively shouting "My water broke!" across a crowded village hall in Surrey.

When my wife was pregnant with our twin girls, Mia and Lily, we were thrust into this bizarre world of mandatory organised fun. As a deeply cynical British bloke whose primary coping mechanism is avoiding eye contact, I found the whole concept terrifying. But here's the massive, unspoken secret about all these modern baby shower games ideas floating around the internet: they don't actually have to be humiliating. You can, in fact, host an afternoon that results in you getting loads of free supplies without making your university friends want to block your number.

Why the yarn measuring thing needs to be outlawed immediately

I'm going to spend exactly three paragraphs aggressively ranting about one specific activity, because I think it represents everything wrong with traditional baby showers. You know the one I mean. It’s the game where an overly enthusiastic relative hands out a ball of yellow knitting yarn and asks all the guests to snip off a length they believe accurately corresponds to the circumference of the pregnant woman's stomach.

Think about this for a second. In what other social scenario is it acceptable to publicly estimate the girth of a human being using crafting supplies? The psychological warfare of this moment is staggering. You have poor Sandra from HR snipping a piece of string that could genuinely wrap around a mid-sized Volvo, while the mother-to-be sits there, smiling tightly, deeply regretting inviting anyone at all.

It's awful. It's outdated. Just skip it. Instead, play the 'guess the baby's birth weight' game, which is still highly inaccurate but at least directs the unhinged guesswork toward an unborn child rather than a woman who hasn't seen her own feet since November.

What actually works when you lock thirty people in a room

The entire point of these gatherings is to bridge the awkward gap between people who only know each other through you. You’ve got your mother-in-law, your former flatmate who still thinks it’s 2014, and your pregnant NCT class friends who only talk about perineal massage. You need icebreakers.

The best ones are the ones that lean into the shared absurdity of impending parenthood. We opted for a hybrid approach when we had ours (co-ed, obviously, because why should mothers suffer alone?). Here's what genuinely kept people from leaving early:

• The 'Mommy or Daddy' paddle game: Give everyone a little cardboard sign with a moustache on one side and lips on the other. Read out statements like, "Who's more likely to drop their phone on the infant's head at 3am?" or "Who will cry first during a vaccination?" It requires zero physical exertion from the guests and usually sparks deeply funny arguments between the expectant couple.
• The Price is Right (Nappy Edition): Hold up everyday items—a tube of nipple cream, a box of formula, a digital thermometer—and have childless friends guess what they cost. The utter shock on a 28-year-old bachelor's face when he realises what a decent tub of Sudocrem goes for is worth the price of the catering alone.
• Blindfolded nappy changing: This is purely for the sadistic pleasure of watching grown men panic. Hand them a doll, a newborn nappy, and a blindfold. Time them. My mate Gary accidentally taped the nappy to the doll's forehead, which frankly explained a lot about his general competence in life.

Games that mysteriously result in you getting free stuff

If you're smart about it, you can disguise blatant stockpiling as charming entertainment. You have a small human (or in my case, two) arriving soon, and they require a frankly offensive amount of gear.

The 'Diaper Raffle' is brilliant. You print on the invitations that anyone who brings a pack of nappies (or eco-friendly wipes, if you’re trying to save the planet while slowly losing your mind) gets entered into a draw to win a decent prize. A bottle of nice gin, maybe a luxury candle. People love gambling. We ended up with enough nappies to get us through the first three months, which, with twins, meant we had approximately four thousand of them stacked in the downstairs loo like sandbags in a trench.

Another brilliant stockpiling disguise is the memory bag. You take a nice, large tote bag and fill it with useful items that the parents get to keep afterwards. The guests have to stick their hand in without looking and write down what they feel. This is a great excuse to ask someone to buy you a really nice, high-quality centrepiece item that you genuinely want, and just use it as a "prop" for the party.

For example, if you're putting together a group gift or a prop basket, the Leaf & Rattle Play Gym Set from Kianao is phenomenal for this. First of all, it comes in pieces, so you can throw the beautiful, untreated wooden shapes and the soft, pastel-coloured crochet rattles into the guessing bag. Guests will pull out a wooden cactus and look utterly confused.

But more importantly, I honestly love this specific play gym. When Mia and Lily were about four months old, they spent most of their time trying to aggressively steal each other's socks. We put this play gym over them on a mat, and the soft rattling noise from the wooden rings genuinely captivated them. It’s made from solid wood, cut incredibly smooth, and it doesn't look like a primary-coloured plastic nightmare that’s going to clash with your living room rug. It brings a bit of natural texture into the house, and because it folds away instantly, I could hide it whenever childless friends came round to pretend we still had a stylish home.

I'll say, we also have the Bear Play Gym Set, which operates on the exact same A-frame wooden structure. It's perfectly fine. The little bear faces are a bit derpy, in a cute way, but I personally prefer the aesthetic of the leafy one. They both do the exact same job of distracting a baby long enough for you to drink a cup of coffee while it’s seriously still hot, which is the only metric that truly matters.

The culinary terror of blind pureed food testing

Inevitably, someone will suggest the baby food tasting game. This involves peeling the labels off little glass jars of pureed mush, handing out tiny spoons, and making your adult friends guess the flavour profile.

Let me just say this: I tasted an organic 'pea, spinach, and parsnip' blend during our shower, and my soul temporarily left my body. It tasted like damp soil mixed with despair. It's hilarious to watch your mates gag on pureed beef casserole, but you do have to be a bit careful here.

A bloke I vaguely know from a pub quiz once told me his health visitor warned him about adult food allergies flaring up at these events. I've no idea if the science on that holds up—I barely scraped a C in GCSE Biology—but apparently, if you hide the labels, you might accidentally feed a rogue strawberry or dairy trace to a mate with an EpiPen. So, if you're going to torture your friends with mashed carrots, maybe just keep the ingredient lists in your back pocket, yeah? Better to ruin their palate than put them in the back of an ambulance on a Sunday afternoon.

If you need a break from reading about my sleep-deprived opinions on pureed parsnips, you might want to browse some actual, highly useful things that don't taste like dirt. Check out Kianao’s collection of wooden toys—they're significantly less stressful than guessing games.

Quiet corners for the introverts

Not everyone wants to shout across a room or aggressively race to put a nappy on a doll. You will have guests—usually the introverted ones, or the heavily pregnant friends who are just there for the cake—who want to sit quietly and do something constructive.

Crafting stations are the saving grace of any baby show. We set up a table with a stack of plain white, organic cotton onesies and bibs, alongside a massive pack of non-toxic fabric markers. The instruction was simple: draw something funny or write a piece of advice.

A quick word of warning on this: you absolutely must make sure the pens are baby-safe and non-toxic. Newborn skin is absurdly sensitive. I remember reading on one of those terrifying 3am parenting forums that cheap fabric dyes can cause massive rashes. I don't know the exact chemical breakdown, but I wasn't about to risk Mia breaking out in hives because my mate drew a crude cartoon on her chest with a cheap permanent marker. Stick to the good, natural stuff.

Some of the bibs we got out of this activity were genuine works of art. Some of them looked like they were drawn in the dark by a toddler. But they were all deeply personal, and when you're crying over a spectacular spit-up incident at 4am, looking down and seeing a bib that says "At least you're not at work" in your best friend's handwriting really helps.

If you want to have a grand prize for the best piece of art, a brilliant shout is the Tent & Ring Hanger and Wood Play Bow. It’s chemical-free, features BPA-free silicone beads, and the little tent and ring wooden pendants are universally appealing. It makes you look like a highly generous, eco-conscious host, when really you just clicked 'add to cart' while hiding from your own children in the bathroom.

A brief word on avoiding the dreaded cringe

Look, surviving the modern baby shower is entirely about managing expectations and refusing to participate in anything that genuinely makes you uncomfortable. If you don't want to play a single game, don't. Just invite people over, order a massive takeaway, and force them to assemble your flat-pack cot. (Really, that's a brilliant game. The 'Who Can Decipher the Swedish Furniture Instructions' challenge. Highly suggest.)

But if you're going to incorporate activities, keep them fast, keep them funny, and make sure they result in you walking away with enough wipes to handle the impending chaos. Because once that tiny human arrives, the real games begin, and there are absolutely no prizes for winning those.

If you want to stock up on beautifully crafted, sustainable gear that will genuinely survive the twin-tornado test, take a look at Kianao's full range of baby gyms and wooden pendants before you finalise that registry.

Highly specific and entirely subjective FAQs

Do we really have to have prizes for the winners?
Unless you want a riot on your hands, yes. Grown adults become ferociously competitive over £5 coffee shop gift cards when forced to blind-taste apple puree. Buy a few nice chocolate bars or a decent hand cream. Don't give out baby-themed prizes to your childless friends; nobody wants a dummy-shaped keyring.

How long should the games portion of the afternoon last?
Forty-five minutes. Maximum. Any longer and people will start faking phone calls to escape. I once attended a shower where the host forced us into a two-hour trivia tournament about celebrity baby names. I considered climbing out the bathroom window. Keep it tight, keep it moving.

Is it weird to ask for specific brands for the nappy raffle?
Not at all. In fact, you must. If you don't specify, you'll end up with a mountain of the cheapest, most plasticky nappies on the market that will leak straight onto your lovely sofa. Just write, "We'd love to build a stash of [Insert Brand] or eco-friendly wipes!" People appreciate the clear direction because guessing is exhausting.

What if the mother-to-be hates being the centre of attention?
Then you absolutely ban any game that involves her standing up, being measured, or acting out charades. Shift all the focus onto the guests. Make them compete against each other while she sits in a comfortable chair, eating cake, and judging them from afar. It's the only correct way to handle it.

Are virtual showers still a thing, and do games work on Zoom?
Tragically, yes, the Zoom shower endures for long-distance relatives. My advice? Stick to 'The Price is Right' via screen share, or use a printable Bingo card where they cross off items as the parents open gifts on camera. Don't attempt anything that requires synchronized movement over a patchy Wi-Fi connection; it just looks like a glitch in the Matrix.