Best gift for the Bestie from away who’s having a baby

My Bestie lives well over 3000 miles away. We have been friends since grade school. As the new kid in the school, I was an outcast in the beginning and she was protective of her turf but it wasn’t long before she warmed to my charm and we’ve been friends ever since.

The thousands of miles of distance is a lot, considering we grew up a bike ride away from each other, occupied all the same high school classes and lunch time hangouts and spent at least an hour chatting on the phone every evening, despite seeing each other all day.

We attended different universities, after high school that sent us on diverging paths. We always stayed in touch and saw each other on holidays but the sad truth is, we’ve grown accustomed to living our adult lives in separate cities.

Despite the distance and the impossibility of coordinating a skype call with a three hour time difference, busy careers and children under 5, our friendship is the real deal and when big milestones happen, we make every effort to be there in the flesh for one another. When this isn’t possible, we feel sad.

It was difficult when my bestie had her first baby. I wasn’t there. I was actually waiting for a bus, on my way home from work when I got her phone call about the arrival of her son. I felt so much happiness and excitement but it also made me really disappointed that I couldn’t be there to hold that little babe and hug my friend. I couldn’t go visit and help her by vacuuming her floors, making a meal or folding her laundry.

When my son was born, this was no doubt equally difficult for her. Fortunate for me, she was travelling home that summer and was able to make a quick stop to see me and meet my new baby for a few hours on her whirlwind East Coast tour to visit all her family. We both wished for more time, but you take what you can get.

It flat out sucks that we can’t be there for each other the way we want to be, especially through all the hard, messy parts. We have to settle for periodic silly, inside joke texts, quick impromptu phone and Facetime chats and moral support/pep talks from afar.

Being in different parts of the country, one thing that we both immensely enjoy is sending and receiving care packages and gifts via snail mail. We use to have more time for this; before jobs, marriage, a house and kids. The reality is that neither of us have the time anymore to shop for just the right items, pack them into a box and drop it at the post office. The multiple steps of this process are impossible to manage with a mountain of other responsibilities weighing on us, despite our best intentions.

If only there was a service that curated lovely care packages and delivered them right to your mom and mama-to-be besties, right?!

Oh wait! There is! It’s called Oh Mother Care Kits. It’s a Canadian subscription box business that hand-selects beautiful, seasonally-inspired artisan products and ships them direct to your friend!

Wanna learn more? Check out Oh Mother Care Kits here.