Birth announcements

If you have children, how did you announce their arrival to the world?

• Did you / your partner make a few phone calls to your parents, best friends and then let the grapevine do the rest?
• Did you Tweet or text?
• Did you place an announcement in The Times, El Mundo, The New York Post, Le Monde, De Telegraaf et al?
• Did you buy a pack of birth announcement cards from the local card shop and eventually get round to sending them out?
• Did you spend hours designing a card yourself and chosing all the right words etc?

In the Netherlands sending out the birth announcement card (geboortekaart) is a major event and given much thought and hours pouring over card designs. There are hundreds of websites where you can choose a ready made design, add photos, text, colour etc or produce something entirely of your own making. It is expected that you'll send these out to family, friends, neighbours, colleagues within a few days of the birth, giving full details of your baby's name, d.o.b., time of birth, weight, proud family members etc. It's also a prompt for everyone to come and visit you and meet your beautitful new baby. The card will nearly always include the times you and your baby will be resting and not taking visitors (otherwise you'll be even more exhausted than you already).

In addition to the cards, a front of house window display of somekind is pretty much essential. It could simply be a string of bunting across the window with meisje (girl) or jongen (boy) printed on. Or a more elaborate huge stork looking like its crash landed in the window! I once saw an inflatible baby around 4 meters tall in the front garden of a new arrival. Maybe cute stickers of babies crawling across the window, or a personalised flag flying from your flag pole with your baby's name on (many houses have flag poles for proudly displaying the Netherlands flag on the Queens birthday etc).

Everyone has seen your growing bump for the past 9 months (or there abouts) and now they'll know your baby has arrived and will want to come and share your enjoyment of your precious little one.

Both of our kiddos birth announcements (both born in the Netherlands) were home made. For Luca we had all the time in the world to prepare. We made each letter of his name from autumn leaves collected at the park, then photographed each one from above, half hanging from a ladder (Huzz not me, I was 8 months gone and had no balance whatsoever). The final photographs were mounted on card. They were a work of art. We had also prepared one for a girl (we didn't know the sex) which was even more time consuming - Isabella - twice as long a Luca, but never used of course.

For Ruby, we came up with various designs, but all for the name India.  Yes, until 2 weeks before her birth, we had planned for India, and then did a last minute switch around of names.  We were so much more busy 2nd time around (no reflection on her importance to us), and the cards didn't get finished until a week after Miss Ruby's arrival. This time we chose a beautiful photograph of her on the day she was born, and in big red letters printed Ruby next to it.

Our window displays were kind of tame compared to some - a banner on our front door for Luca, made with the same leaf lettering as the cards, and for Ruby, each letter of her name printed in red on an A4 sheet, clipped with little pink and white pegs to a ribbon in the front window.

When I was born, my parents sent out cards, embossed with gold lettering to all the family and friends. A bit fancy eh?

What about you?  How did you tell the world that your precious little baby had now arrived?