Next to going to the dentist, baby showers are my least favorite thing. Ever. As a single, child-free woman, there is nothing worse than gathering with other ladies to eat tea sandwiches and mini-quiches while having to ohh and ahh over baby crap. Don’t get me wrong – I am all for parties, but I like my parties to have lots of booze and only minimal references to reproducing.

It seems like almost every girl I know is having a baby these days (at one count I knew 12 pregnant women) so my mailbox has been seeing a lot of the baby shower invite action. Since no one seems to remember how to put on a condom anymore, I thought I’d go over some suggestions on how to entice your single, child-free friends into wanting to go to your baby shower instead of viewing the shower invite as if it were another bill just in pastel colors.

First let me say, you should know that your friends are happy for you. They don’t need to get you a gift to prove that. Having a baby changes your whole life – but remember it changes YOUR whole life, not the lives of your friends. While you are out shopping for cribs and changing tables, I’m still going to be shutting down the bars on a Tuesday night. Second, baby showers are only fun for the person collecting the loot. No one ever really WANTS to go to a baby shower because it’s more than just showing up. I have to go shopping for a gift (usually at Babies-R-Us, the worst store in the history of retail establishments. Have you ever been in that store and not heard multiple babies screaming at the top of their lungs?), get dressed up, drive across town, and spend a few hours pretending to enjoy being sober while playing games with toilet paper and watching the mother-to-be unwrapping bibs and onesies?! We all want to support our friends, but come on.

So how do you make a baby shower fun? You can’t really. By definition, baby showers aren’t supposed to be fun but they don’t have to be entirely painful.

• Serve booze. And lots of it. People seem to have more fun once they’ve been properly lubricated. If you want to keep with the baby shower theme, serve the booze in baby bottles. But, if you want me to get excited about a bib, I’m going to need a drink.
• Ditch the pastel colors. Pink, blue, yellow and green are BORING unless you are the Easter Bunny. Throw in some animal print or some orange to wake things up.
• Keep the guest list small. I know it’s tempting to invite 50 of your closest friends or anyone who has ever sent you a shower invitation, but get real. You don’t have to invite everyone you’ve ever been within 5 miles of. If you can find a dozen women who are willing to give up their weekend afternoon for this, you should consider yourself lucky.
• Get a stripper. What? A naked man didn’t get you in this position in the first place?
• Open the gifts at home. Or at least don’t make me sit there and stare while some poor woman, who is feeling as big as a house, unwraps a diaper genie. If I didn’t want to eat those crappy crust-less sandwiches before, I certainly don’t when being confronted with the fact that this unborn child is going to crap – a lot.
• Stop playing games. No one likes it. It’s an awful thing trying to guess how many toilet paper squares it takes to wrap around the mom-to-be’s belly when all you are thinking about is how you wipe your butt with this stuff.
• Enjoy yourself. Find a way to have fun or your guests will be telling me about the shower you threw when I ask them about the worst baby shower experience they’ve ever had.

Jennifer Nunnally has aspired to be a writer and have a book in the Library of Congress her whole life. Jennifer lives in Houston with her cat, enjoys getting day drunk, and has a fear of being taken seriously.