One mum shares how she made her "baby sprinkle" a sustainable one.
Recent surveys show that the once American-only baby shower scene is steadily growing in popularity in Ireland. Now, we have baby sprinkles and honestly, it's getting a little hard to keep up.
A baby sprinkle is basically a toned-down version of a baby shower. Technically speaking, a baby sprinkle is usually thrown for a mum who still wants to celebrate the birth of her second, third or fourth baby but without the extravagance of a full-blown baby shower.
According to shutterfly.com:
"Proper baby sprinkle etiquette calls for guests to bring simple gifts like diapers, baby clothes, toiletries, wipes, and more."
Sounds pretty straight forward right?
Well, one mum wanted to go one step further and made her baby sprinkle a sustainable one.
According to mother.ly, Conz Preti said she was completely overwhelmed by the number of things she received from her friends and family during her first baby shower. Her newborn, as it turns out, didn't need as much stuff as her Amazon registry allowed for.
She said:
As our son grew by the minute, I became hyper-aware of how wasteful having a kid can be. Yes, there is the ridiculous number of diapers they go through a day—which all end up in landfills forever—but there's also how fast they grow out of clothes or how quickly they lose interest in plastic toys.
This experience led her to re-think how she would do things the second time around - especially now that she was pregnant with twins.
She writes:
I've decided that I'm not falling into the same trap, especially with the whole needing two of everything idea.
So when the time came for her baby sprinkle, her husband suggested they do a "re-sprinkle" - where anyone who wanted to bring them a gift would be asked to bring hand-me-downs (anything from clothes to a half-used box of diapers), or something bought from a second-hand store or environmentally-friendly company instead.
It was an unbelievable success. Preti even shared an amazing story about receiving a onesie that she had gifted to someone else:
As I was unpacking and organizing all the stuff we got, I noticed a familiar onesie. My sister-in-law had passed down clothes her twins had outgrown when we had our son and this onesie was part of that pile. I had then passed it to a friend who also had a boy shortly after us. She then passed on back to us, meaning this adorable bright green onesie is now on its fourth life and looking brand new. That's when the importance of what we chose to do hit me.
We think this is a brilliant idea and while "re-sprinkles" certainly aren't going to change the world, they're a fantastic way to do your bit for the environment, one bib and diaper at a time.
What do you think?
