Online Baby Shower

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Its an Online Baby Shower for Baby H2. You're Invited!

Her birth is only days (or weeks, hopefully!) away.  So let's do an online shower today!

This afternoon my mom and sister are making a baby shower for Baby H2 (name is still up in the air, but definitely closer than during previous weeks!) at my cousin Katherine's house in my hometown.

I have a lot of online friends that I only know through blogging or through a few website forums, friends who were In Real Life Friends before jobs or school or life made us move apart and now we communicate online exclusively, friends and family who read this blog but were celebrating other occasions during this time slot, and also, hopefully, strangers I don't know who are interested in helping celebrate this baby through donating to the charity I chose for her infancy.

The shower, which I wrote about here and here and here, is important to me as a rite of passage as a mom and important to me on a different level - on the level that is both global and intensely personal at the heart level.

I am accepting donations for my daughter in behalf of the wonderful organization called Sonrise Baby Home in Jinja, Uganda.

This orphanage was started by a woman who is a few years younger than me who saw a need in her culture to care for orphaned, abandoned, or under-cared for babies and toddlers.  She just saw a need, prayed, and DID something about it!  How inspiring.  I want my daughter to be this brave and this altruistic.

She keeps a blog to let others know about this need.  So blogging, loving of children, and this diaper drive are basically all I have in common with her!

I want to raise awareness for Sonrise Baby Home, and thus, hopefully raise enough concern to motivate YOU (or your friends, if you send them a link to this blog post!) to help these babies in Uganda.

Sonrise Baby Home doesn't get a beautiful shower tomorrow with cupcakes and giggling relatives.  I do! My baby does!  It doesn't seem fair that these kids need so much, while so many kids in America don't need much, but get doted on with elaborate and wonderful parties.

These babies need proper nutrition.  They need love.  They need supervision and guidance and education.  They need so much!

I am asking you to click over to the Sonrise Baby Home website to learn more about these kids.  Then I'd like you to consider donating to help the organization.

There are two ways you can donate.  One is through PayPal (so easy!) through their website.  You can see specifically what the costs are to run the orphanage and fund a part of their expenses.

Sonrise Ministries, Inc is a legally recognized, 501c3 non-profit organization and your donations are 100% tax deductible.

(So paranoid people like my mother in law... I think you are totally fine and safe! I looked it up and spoke with people on the phone about it! Its no scam!)Another way you can donate is through collecting cloth diapers for them.  If you read my blog, you know I am a big cloth diaper advocate.  Actually, because of our lifestyle, cloth diapering is a CHOICE I made for my family.  For these babies, cloth isn't a choice, its a necessity.  Cloth or nothing. 

These babies need cloth diapers. 

You can donate cloth you already have (contact me).

Or, what would be so much EASIER and definitely affordable ($1.50 buys a diaper for a Sonrise Baby!), is to click to the website called Go Green Baby Co.  They have a donations page for these babies!  You can donate by adding the diapers to your shopping cart and paying for them like you can pay for anything else online.

Here's what my shopping cart looked like... and I am excited to click a higher number for quantities ordered after some friends and family send the cash they've pledged for this purpose!

 You can buy an entire dozen diapers for the babies, if you'd like. FYI... my son used about 15 infant sized prefolds per DAY during his first 3-4 months of life.  Now as an 20 month old, he would use 5-9 of the premium sized prefolds during a typical day.

If you are interested further in the lives of these babies, check out the Sonrise Baby Home Facebook page. 

Here's a photo of some of the children wearing their diapers.  SO CUTE.

These kids are wearing cloth diapers WITHOUT waterproof covers, unlike most kids in America.  They are also wearing hand washed and sun dried diapers, unlike most kids in America.

I included this photo, too, because we have the same Primo baby bath tub and a similar Moses basket that our daughter will be using in the next month or so!  I can just picture her older brother leaning over to bother her, just like the little one is doing to another baby in this photo above!



On behalf of my Baby H2, I really encourage you to think of making a donation in behalf of a very lucky American child instead of just checking out the Babies R Us registry their parents made for them.  Baby presents are great and definitely have their place in our culture, as does gift giving as a sign of love, but how awesome it would be for a parent to receive a letter from you saying that you gave to a needy baby on their lovely child's behalf.  You can always skip the $4 baby shower card and postage and give that to a needy baby, right?

Please, if you have thoughts about this, don't hesitate to email me.  And please, post comments indicating if you did send this post along to others or if you were motivated to help because this is something I want to include in my daughter's baby book! 

Thanks so much for coming to Baby H2's online baby shower!  Please feel free also to leave any comments, as if this is a guest book at a for real baby shower.  Sorry, I couldn't find a way to get you a virtual pink napkin or shower game trinket!