The Shower Diva: Where Fun Reigns!

Kate Ward, Editor of TheNestbaby.com

"TheNestBaby.com is a hip modern take on first time motherhood. Its key competitive advantage is that it's a community of first time mothers who share their advice, experiences, and personal stories with one another. TheNestBaby's goals are to satisfy the users of the site, by creating a community of women across a broad spectrum -- those trying to get pregnant, those who are pregnant and for new parents."
- Kate Ward

The Nest Baby is one of our favorites here at The Shower Diva, so when Kate Ward said she could clear her busy schedule in order to give us time to interview her, we leaped over tall buildings in a single bound to make it happen!

Moms-to-Be and women who want to become pregnant instantly feel at home at this loving site. All they need to do is take advantage of the free sign up and get connected! TheNestBaby.com provides for a full community experience. It is complete with blogs, personal forums and fantastic photo upload capability. You'll find NestBaby specialty shops, a free newsletter, links to local resources, as well as pregnancy and fertility tools. The site sports special tabs featuring top information on a woman's 1st trimester running all the way through a baby's first 6 months of life!

When you join TheNestBaby, you become part of a neighborhood – a real community of real women going through the exact same things moms everywhere are. Check out the online mom journals and featured birth stories. You'll see what we mean!

Create Community! Explore Your World and Throw the Best Baby Showers Ever!

Kate says, don't underestimate the power of the co-ed baby shower. We're looking at big changes in our society. Major shifts in the family over the last few decades have led to many more couples needing or wanting to share parenting at deeper levels. Today's parents work... Both of them. This huge demographic shift runs from top to bottom. Whether we're looking at high rollers who pull down big career salaries or at an average middle class couple where both work to make ends meet, home life has changed. It's not your 1950's Ward and June Cleaver family dynamic anymore.

Because families continue to change and evolve, our community and social lives are evolving too. Desire and necessity may make strange companions, but the two are wedded for keeps. Our lives on planet earth have undergone dramatic shifts, especially over the last 20-25 years. Celebrating our rites of passage, such as becoming pregnant and having a new baby have reinvented themselves to reflect massive post-modern shifts.

Big Trend: Today's baby showers are going more "male" friendly.

To facilitate this, Kate recommends a variety of fun ways to accommodate the interests of both sexes:

• Start the party off in separate rooms that are decorated and arranged to accommodate different gender themes. It's simply a fact. Guys like guy things and need time to hang with other men in order to bond, catch up and, well, act like guys. They aren't likely to unwind and get with the spirit in a frilly setting!
• Women want to do the same thing – bond, connect, catch up and share. They may not feel comfortable doing so in a room decorated with NFL posters and beanbag chairs. Make sure both guys and gals are made comfortable by having those two venues. That way people can party together when they want, but have "masculine and feminine" party theme rooms where they can retreat.
• Be sure to plan a special time during the shower for both sexes to "meet in the middle" so that gift opening can be a community-based, shared event!
• Incorporate different types of games – if you know women will enjoy classic, upscale shower games but guys won't, let the guys go shoot pool, watch a ball game on TV in "their" room, or hang around out back by the barbecue grill. As long as both men and women have activities to enjoy, your co-ed shower is going to be a smash!
• If you want a hilarious "different" kind of shower game for guys, try the baby-bottles-filled-with-beer drinking contest. I'm serious! This is a fun one because women get to watch their guys chug-a-lug from a baby bottle while kibitzing on the side – cheer your macho man on! The guy who finishes his bottle the fastest gets a prize! Be sure to have plenty of prizes on hand for as many games and rounds as you are going to play. That being said, it would probably be a good idea to limit the number of beer-in-a-baby-bottle contests you have!
• Women always enjoy lots of classic shower games. Today's shower games and favors are designed to be more upscale. They are elegant, modern and very affordable too! An old favorite that's still in vogue is the well-known Dirty Diaper Game. This one is so easy and cost effective! Simply melt different candy bars into diapers and have the ladies guess which candy bar is in which diaper. The winner should get a lovely prize, such as a scented candle or bottle of fragrant hand lotion!
• The smaller, intimate, ladies shower for Mom-to-Be never goes out of style. These are especially popular with a woman who has already had large shower thrown for her at work, church or by her extended family. Close friends love showering a Mom-to-Be, so these small, feminine, elegant gatherings are always a hit. The sky's the limit when it comes to themes, but one favorite is the Beauty Spa Shower. No Mom-to-Be on planet earth would dream of turning down a spa day at a local club, or deny herself the pleasure of a pampering spree that's staged at a dear friend's home. Check your community listings for a manicurist and/or skin expert who is available to work parties. Hire one or two to spend the day at the shower so that Mom-to-Be and guests all get revivified and made glamorous!

Showers are made not by the amount of money spent or even by the luxurious locations in which they're held. Showers are made fabulous by connecting love to warmth, warmth to laughter and laughter to memory. No matter what shower theme you've chosen, make sure to include something intimate and emotional for Mom-to-Be to take home and cherish. It could be something like having everyone bring a copy of their favorite childhood book so that mom can store it away for the time when her little one is old enough to enjoy story time. For families, it could be something as sweet as the creation of a scrapbook where photos of grandparents, ancestors, and family baby pictures are laid out in a generational sweep.

The idea is community and that's what women find waiting for them at TheNestBaby.com. Today's neighborhoods span the globe! Today's communities are not only down our own block but are only a mouse click away! You can learn a lot from women just like you at the exact time you need to. You can also learn how women you think might be different from you really aren't so different after all. The miracles of pregnancy and birth were meant to be shared! Don't wait. Get started today!

TheNestBaby.com has so many fun, informative and educational features we could barely begin to list them all. Hustle on over and get ready to be wowed! Thanks a million to Kate Ward for talking to us and for being a special part of The Shower Diva's community!

Before Kate Ward started as an editor at TheNestbaby.com, she worked at Self magazine as their online editor. She became pregnant while acting as an editor at TheNestBaby.com and is now the mother of daughter Audrey, born on January 20, 2008. Welcome, Audrey!

You can view her Nest Bio and fun wedding pictures.

For a magical inside view of how women share TheNestBaby.com's community experience, read "Katie's birth story - Baby Audrey is finally here!"