AIBU to find a baby shower wish list a bit grabby?

Families do that, I do for my grandbabies. You don't expect that from friends at a grabby gift giving party. I'm sorry that's your environment, where expectations are expensive gifts because you let your bloke on the nest one day and got upduffed.

You'd think people didn't actually like their friends and wish mum and baby well, the way people go on about baby showers.

Get a gift from the list or not, but spare us the faffing about whether or not people followed the etiquette from Debretts circa 1987.

(Don't enjoy baby showers and didn't have one, but can't stand this sort of piffling moaning.)

Just stop and think. As an expectant triplet mum you need to buy many things in TRIPLICATE. That is why I had a suggested gift list. People rallied together to help us at an extraordinary time with THREE premature babies on the way. The financial implications short and long term are huge. They wanted guidance on what was needed to help to practically support us as a family and they asked for a gift list. It’s extraordinary that you think this is grabby. I only hope you don’t have to fund three newborns at once with little chance of getting back to work anytime soon. Extraordinary view.

But that doesn't sound like a baby shower? More like ongoing triplet support?

This is my understanding too. I just give a gift at the baby shower and a card when baby is born. Some friends didn’t do a baby shower (I personally wouldn’t have one) and they just got a present when the baby was born

i also don’t see the problem with a list. I’m spending the money either way so would rather buy something useful.

Tbh I think a baby shower in general is grabby. You get a gift when the baby is born. Why should you get another? And acquaintances who wouldn't normally buy you a gift at all may be feel obligated if you invite them to your baby shower.

I don’t know whether it was intentional but your post came across as incredibly demanding.

It stops being about people choosing to give a gift out of the goodness of their heart and becomes a demand for people to provide stuff because you are expecting three babies and are out of your depth.

People are more likely to help if it is their idea and their choices.

Yeah thats more than grabby.

Do you actually like your friends?

Cause if one of my friends was a bit freaked and under pressure about having an unexpected trio of newborn's with potential health issues, I'd hope I'd give her some slack about it all.

And if someone was all "I don't like your tone, stressed and overwhelmed friend", I'd probably think myself better off without them.

It was a friend of my parents so I didn’t really know them. We suspected they were regifting it! 😂

To be fair I think its different if people have asked for a gift list vs just being sent one with an invitation to a baby shower, no?

Would you give a wedding gift a few months before the wedding and then another gift at the wedding? I’m guessing not. So why be so grabby?

I was commenting on the tone of the PP’s comment on here.

If one of my friends was overwhelmed then I would be supportive. If they started issuing lists of stuff they wanted without being asked then that isn’t a good look.

In the US, if you give a gift at the baby shower, you don't normally give a gift after the baby is born. For a wedding shower, it is often a matter of two gifts because the wedding shower gifts are usually fairly modest. But if someone does give a more expensive wedding shower gift, they would not be expected to give a second wedding gift.

Some of y'all will definitely clutch your pearls at this: In the Southern US where I live, it is not uncommon for there to be multiple wedding showers, although they might not have overlapping guest lists. Pre-wedding parties (not all are showers) are a big part of getting married in the South; there can easily be half a dozen or more.

yes, in other places in North America too, can be multiple showers. And they main point that people are missing here is that they are thrown for you BY SOMEONE ELSE. Lots of the attendees are from different circles (like colleagues) and wouldn't necessarily even be invited to the wedding (or to visit you at home with the baby or whatever). Just a different tradition!

No, its not. A portion of one, maybe two generations copying America because they live their lives on social media, does not equate to a entire change of culture for a country.

But you do realise that when your real life friend was, perhaps, commenting about her situation online, she might not be using the same language to describe her feelings - she might sound demanding and entitled to you, and let out frustrations that she doesn't do face to face with her friends?

And in real life, you'd probably cut your actual friend a bit more slack even if they were being demanding.

I find it useful to hear people's opinions on Mumsnet precisely because you see the less-varnished view of someone's feelings.

Great, then don’t have baby showers lol. If they’re “not your culture” and the entire gift-giving premise is considered grabby, why are you adopting the specifically American tradition built around showering an expectant parent with gifts in the first place? You can’t borrow the name and format, remove the defining feature, then tell Americans they’ve misunderstood it. At that point you’re just having a pre-baby party, which is perfectly fine, but it isn’t somehow the more culturally correct version of a baby shower.

Yes it is grabby. I dont like the very idea of baby showers. Something could go wrong.

Because words have meanings, and you seem determined to argue with one while accidentally proving it. A baby shower is called a shower because the expectant parent is being showered with gifts. A registry is optional. Gifts are not some bizarre American contamination of the concept, they are literally the central feature that gave the event its name.

And the Halloween comparison is nonsense. Pumpkins replaced turnips in America because pumpkins were actually available there and easier to carve. That is an adaptation of a tradition, not the removal of its defining purpose. Nobody is saying a baby shower stops being a baby shower because there isn’t an Amazon wishlist attached to it. If people came to the showers you attended and brought gifts without being told what to buy, then congratulations, you attended baby showers. You have spent several paragraphs angrily explaining my own point back to me.

The distinction really is not difficult: registry optional but useful, gifts central. If your objection is specifically to registries, then say that instead of pretending the entire gift-giving element is some tacky American invention and then immediately describing events where everyone brought gifts anyway.

I wouldn’t cut them slack for using that tone of ‘well I’m having three babies so you need to give me stuff’

Luckily none of my friends would behave like that

i went to one at the weekend/ she had a wish list it was great. I literally just picked something in my price range and checked out. I wouldn’t then buy them then another gift care after the baby arrives.

I object to being expected to shell out twice per baby to be honest.

In the triplet situation it’s not the job of others to provide stuff in triplicate and it’s somewhat transactional to use your friends for that.

And yet some people complain if they don’t get something when the baby is born as well. It’s a bloody minefield

I attended a few when we lived abroad. One woman particularly struck me as a CF. The invitation included a wish list, they had registered at a store like you do with a wedding. They had the audacity to state that people weren’t to shop “off list” ie anything they hadn’t asked for or from anywhere else. They were all expensive gifts.
I didn’t go. They then had another baby and had a “ baby sprinkle” 🤮 I didn’t go to that either ,they did the same with that for gifts. Not many people went to it and she complained that people were tight 🤣