Writing baby shower thank you notes seems simple. However, with a million things to do as an expectant mother, the biggest challenge is finding the time. The sheer labor (pardon the pun) of mailing and writing all of your baby shower thank you notes can be overwhelming.

Ideally, everybody would get a handwritten thank you for their baby gift. However, if you just don’t have the time to write everyone, there is a loophole. Formal etiquette for gift thank you notes is that a card is not required in cases where the giver was present for the opening of the gift and received a thank you in person.

Use this as a polite dividing line if you are short on time.

You need help. Delegate. When somebody asks you, “Is there anything I can do?” You say, “Yes.” If no one has specifically offered to help, ask. Everybody wants to help out the most important person in the word–and that’s YOU expectant Mom. Assemble a team of your biggest fans.

If one task is too much, then delegate that task to a couple of people. You can have friends or family members help you by doing part of or all of the following:

1) If you don’t have them already, get someone on Team Mom to pick out and purchase the baby shower thank you notes or some cute stationary sets.

2) You’ll need stamps. Send someone to get them or have the post office deliver them to you.

3) Put the stamps on the envelopes. Heck, if the person who drops off the stamps, comes in for coffee. Ta-dah! You have a perfect coffee-time task.

4) Assemble a list of current addresses via group E-mail or calling people over the phone.

5) Address the baby shower thank you card envelopes. Once again, if you get somebody else to do number four for you or with you, there’s a shot that when the person comes over to give you the list you can do the coffee thing again and have her help you.

6) Bonus delegation task–Put DAD be in charge of writing the thank you notes, and the two of you sign them. Convenient explanations: My knuckles are sore and swollen. He wants to be an active Daddy.

You can finish your baby shower thank you cards without setting aside an entire afternoon or day. What Mom or Mom-to-Be has that much free time? Use these simple steps:

1) Address and stamp all the envelopes in advance. (See above)

2) Write on the flip-side of the gift tag for each present a nice comment about the gift. Alternatively, if you threw away all the tags, you can just put a note in each envelope saying who sent what and something nice about it. (Ex. Carol-stork diaper basket-cute sailor hat on stork) This insures you do not have to waste time looking up the correct spelling of the giver’s name or struggle to remember who gave you what.

3) Put the labeled gift tags or notes in corresponding envelopes.

4) Print out a thank you note template or sample note to base your cards on such as the ones found at http://www.my-thank-you-site.com/sample-thank-you-note-wording.html .

5) Carry a few envelopes and blank cards with you. When you are waiting at that next doctor’s appointment, fill out a few. Other good times to do this include, waiting for food at a restaurant, in between cycles of laundry, when you can’t sleep, and during commercials (instead of holding the fast forward button on the Tivo). The great thing about doing a few or just one at a time is that it keeps your handwriting neat.

6) Drop your finished cards in the nearest mailbox immediately. Do not wait to mail them from home all at once. Just put them in the mail. This way you will have to hurry up and finish the rest soon, and your stack will be smaller. You can delegate this task, but some people, have a tendency to “forget.” Make sure it is somebody reliable.
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