WER GONE GA-GA?

Invitations. But nothing prepared her for the pageantry of her friends’ pregnancies

their main purpose at that time being an opportunity to gather gifts for the future family. Today, presents still feature, with guests joining together to buy big-ticket items such as prams, but they’ve evolved to be more about the party.

The explosion of the baby-shower party may be explained by a general trend (undimmed by a global pandemic) towards commercialising minor celebrations. It’s been happening to Halloween throughout the 2000s and now celebrations such as Easter are being dragged along in its wake. John Lewis reported sales of ‘Easter trees’ were up 65 per cent this year, while searches for the term ‘Easter wreaths’ also reached an all-time high.

As might be expected, celebrity mums have been on the bow wave of the baby-shower trend. Last October, Made in Chelsea’s Millie Mackintosh, 32, celebrated her second pregnancy by posting images from her party on Instagram with hundreds of neutrally coloured balloons creating a picturesque backdrop for her baby bump. A month earlier, Stacey Solomon, 32, shared images of a pink party for her first daughter (after having three sons) featuring flower-decorated Rapunzel hair. Apparently such was the buzz around the shower, some of her guests thought it was going to be a secret wedding to her partner Joe Swash, 40.

There’s also the not-insignificant power of the social media ‘mumfluencer’. Millie Mackintosh’s baby-shower image, for example, garnered several thousand more likes than any of her other recent posts.

These events create the perfect Instagram fodder: beautifully picturesque with you front and centre. It’s even been reported that some model agencies are advising older models (depressingly, this means those in their late 20s) that getting pregnant is a good career move. There are only so many pictures of food and sunset views you can post before your followers may unfollow you – but the journey of motherhood can open up a whole new avenue of social media opportunity.

You might assume that the baby-shower boom would be self-limiting given that – unlike Halloween or Easter – it doesn’t happen every year, nor for every family. But the marketeers have thought of that. Once the number of baby showers has reached saturation point, you simply subdivide the celebration, creating an entirely new one. Welcome to the world of the ‘gender reveal’.

This brand of party, for those who couldn’t guess, is where the sex of the baby is unveiled. The actual ‘reveal’ tends to involve colour – pink or blue. Celebrations range from the simple, such as confetti balloons being popped or a coloured cake being cut, to the deeply elaborate. There are stories of alligators biting into dyed watermelons, or people dressed in baby boy and girl sumo outfits fighting in a ring until the winning baby pins the loser. There are now businesses built around preparing your correctly coloured surprise item, with doctors giving the future baby’s sex to the party organisers so Mum and Dad find out with everyone else.

Among the most newsworthy gender reveals to date have been one that lasted just three minutes, cost £74,000 and entailed the Burj Khalifa in Dubai being lit up blue to let YouTube stars Anas and Asala Marwah know they were expecting a boy. Then there was the 2020 gender reveal that sparked a California wildfire when a pyrotechnic device was used to reveal a baby’s sex and ended up causing £6 million of damage.

You may have gathered that I am not particularly enamoured of such trends.

These American imports feel distinctly un-British; they go directly against our natural ‘don’t count your chickens’ attitude. It does feel a bit like buying a car before you pass your driving test.

Then there’s the stress factor (for guests, I mean), not to mention the expense. Hen dos are bad enough (read: dire multi-day events abroad, costing hundreds of pounds and ruining friendships) without sticking a few baby showers and a gender reveal into the mix.

And, on a very personal note, I’m not sure how much more baby food I can stomach.

‘THE BUZZ WAS SO HUGE, GUESTS THOUGHT IT WAS GOINGTOBEA SECRET WEDDING’