Try a Blessingway Baby Shower

If you‘re looking for a baby shower alternative beyond the registry and the blue and pink rattle favors, consider a blessingway. Loosely based in a Navajo sacred fertility rite, a blessingway is a celebration of the pregnant woman as she embarks on her journey to become a mother. This mother-centered gathering offers friends and family a fresh approach to honoring and supporting the mother-to-be.

"Birth is a major rite of passage in a woman‘s life," says Shari Maser, author of Blessingways: A Guide to Mother-Centered Baby Showers-Celebrating Pregnancy, Birth and Motherhood (Moondance, 2004). "The ceremony is an opportunity to focus our attention, within a loving circle of support, on the incredibly joyful and sometimes painful transformational process of pregnancy and birth."

Each blessingway is unique in its design and execution, custom-created for the woman of honor. The ritual prepares the mother-to-be emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Anxious about natural childbirth? Let your guests bead you a birthing necklace you can use as both a focal point during childbirth and a symbol of their empowering support. Whether through singing, bell ringing, drumming, or poetry reciting, a blessingway captures the exquisitely transformative time of pregnancy and prepares you for that next stage-becoming a mother.

"Birth is a key life passage for women," explains Yana Cortlund, one of several authors of Mother Rising: The Blessingway Journey into Motherhood. "But modern America," Cortland continues, "has become preoccupied with the arrival of baby-to-be, and lost touch with birth‘s profound impact on the mother-to-be herself."

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