How to Plan a Blessingway

A blessingway is a creative alternative to a traditional baby shower. Blessingways, also known as mother blessings, are based on ancient Navajo ceremonies that celebrate a woman's transition to motherhood. This fun, non-materialistic baby shower idea invites women to share their wisdom, pledge their support and pamper the mother-to-be and themselves. Here's how to throw a successful blessingway with ideas that you can choose from according to the honoree's personality.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Quiet, private location
• Food and drinks
• Decorations
• Basin for foot bath
• Bath salts/herbs
• Scented massage oil
• Bowl
• Body paint or henna

1. Determine a guest list with the honoree, and decide on a location. The amount of people you invite will determine whether you can have it at your home, the honoree's home, or perhaps in a rented cottage or cabin. The location should be a private place where everyone will feel comfortable.

2. Plan a menu. Some ideas include standard baby shower fare like tea sandwiches and dips, a feast of fresh, healthy food, or a dessert bar. You could make it a potluck and ask guests to bring a dish.

3. Ask guests to bring a small gift for the mother, like a bead for the blessing necklace (see Step 7), flowers, herbal remedies and care products for labor and post-partum, or something that has special meaning for them. They can also bring traditional baby shower gifts if they like, but that's not the focus.

4. Decorate the room with fresh flowers, candles, wreaths, colorful paper lanterns, fruit, and other symbols of beauty and the abundance of nature.

5. Give the mother a soothing foot bath. You can use herbs, salts, or scented oils. This represents the washing away of the mother's fears of labor and birth.

6. Massage the mother with scented oils. This pampering is meant to indulge the mother before her focus turns to her new baby. All the women present can take part in foot massages, hair brushing, facials, pedicures and other luxuries.

7. Have a bead ceremony. Pass a bowl around the room and have each woman place her bead in the bowl as she gives a blessing for the mother and the baby. At the end of the ceremony, string the beads together and present the bracelet to the mother as a reminder of the support of her friends and family.

8. Ask each woman present to tell a positive story about her own experience with pregnancy, birth or motherhood. Women who don't yet have children can tell stories that relate why they feel the honoree will be a good mother.

9. Paint the mother's belly with body paints or henna. Each guest can add her own little design to it.

Tips & Warnings

• Discuss all of the steps above with the mother. She may want to become involved in the planning process. Allow her to choose elements that she's comfortable with. Some women don't like the more tactile experiences, like belly painting and foot baths.
• There are many more traditions that can be incorporated into a blessingway, or you can make up your own. See Resources below for more ideas.
• For more conventional mothers who are open to a blessingway but also want traditional baby shower ideas incorporated into the party, try taking the elements she likes from both and melding them together into a personalized experience.

Resources

• Go to NaturalTouchDoula.com and click on 'Blessing Way' for more ideas.
• See BlessingwayBook.com for more ideas, personal stories and excerpts from the book 'Mother Rising: The Blessingway Journey into Motherhood'.