A Guatemalan "Baby Shower"

I'm not kidding - here in Guatemala they call it "un baby shower." Not "un" as in not "un" as in one in Spanish. It was a nice event. It seemed to be family, friends, and me. The expectant mother is the daughter of the principle of the school in my town. I had never met her before, but my host family brought me along anyway. I was the only female over the age of 10 who was wearing pants instead of the traditional mayan skirts and tops. As with many Guatemalan events that I have been to there were a lot of dínamicas (ice breakers). In fact that was most of the baby shower. Below are some pictures of the more entertaining activities.

Feeding a friend with a baby bottle. It was a competition to see who could drink the whole bottle the fastest. Maybe they were just uncomfortable or embarrassed, but they didn't seem to particularly enjoy whatever was in the bottle.

Measuring the mother-to-be's belly with toilet paper. A woman went around the room and we ripped off as much toilet paper as we thought would wrap around her stomach. For each square of toilet paper that you got wrong (either too big or too small) you had to deposit 25 centavos ($0.3) into the baby fund. I was 5 squares off so I put in the 1.25 Quetzales ($0.16). It didn't generate a lot of money, but I thought that it was a nice idea and I hope they put it to good use. 

Party favors. Each person got this party favor which had little hard candies in the cup on the back. I found it interesting how these babies look much more like gringos than their baby is going to. Maybe it was just had to find a darker colored foam paper. 

Guess what's in the diaper. A couple was blindfolded and they had to figure out what they were holding. It was a diaper with chocolate in it, but it looked like something else that you would more commonly find in a diaper so they had shocked looks on their faces when they took off their blindfolds.

Pregnant grandfathers-to-be. There weren't men at the baby shower other than the father-to-be, his father, and the father of the mother-to-be. In this activity they made a ball of cloth and wrapped it up in another cloth and tied it to the Grandfathers-to-be to stimulate pregnant bellies. They then had to tie and untie their shoes. The chubbier of the two had a harder time as he had an extra stomach on top of his own. Of course there were many jokes about him being further along in his pregnancy. 

Practice bathing and clothing a baby. The mother and father to-be had to pretend to bathe and clothe a doll.

There were also a couple other activities. Everyone gave one piece of advice to the couple (I recommended that they read to their baby and everyone just kind of looked at me like I was crazy). Everyone suggested a name for the baby. Then the worst of the activities that got me a couple of times. If you crossed your legs (fully or even only your ankles) they tied one of the fake baby bellies around you and you had to wear it until you saw someone else with their legs crossed. The whole event took about three hours and it was all followed by a light snack.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post I had never met the mother-to-be and had only worked briefly with her father, yet my host family brought me along anyway. They have invited me to a number of weddings (here are my blogs on wedding number one, two, and three) where I similarly did not know the people getting married. I am so glad that they did and that they are so open in this respect, but it makes me think about if my own family had a long term foreign exchange student, or someone similar, if we would invite them to all of our family and other events. Maybe it helps that by going to these events I didn't screw up any pre-made seating plans or plate count for food. I think that this relative informality compared to what I have experienced in the U.S. is partially the reason, but I think that I also lucked out being placed in Guatemala in a family-oriented culture and with this host family.