Reactions from Friends and Family

Well, now that the secret is out - we've gotten a lot of funny reactions from folks:

"What a great idea - it's kind of like no impact man - are you guys trying to get a book deal?"

"Are you sure we're related?" - from a highly fashionable cousin

"You're so EARTHY!" - from a less fashionable cousin

"But what do I get you - I don't have kids!?!"

I think our favorite so far was a picture of a great example of how borrowing/re-using items can be quite beautiful and amazing. Here is a picture of a little girl named Chloe on her first birthday and our cousin Marilyn, her grandma, 61 years earlier, both wearing the same dress. So cute!

Everything Borrowed Video

Coming Out to Friends and Family

In addition to being insecure first-time parents, we're also a bit insecure about this whole experiment. Will we fail? Is failing buying wipes (we hadn't even thought about wipes until this weekend)? Is failing deciding after three months that we need to go to Buy Buy Baby (please no!)? Is failing forgetting that this is just a process (like parenting!) where we'll try our best and see what happens?

Or, is failing making all of our friends and family totally hate us for forcing them to participate? Because, you know, some of them will be completely annoyed and some just won't get it.

Truth is, we're already a bit annoying. We had a potluck vegetarian (practically vegan) potluck picnic wedding. We make people take off their shoes (even really cute boots) when they come into our apartment. We met, got engaged, moved in together, all in less than a year; and then got pregnant right after the wedding - all the while joking that we're still "getting to know each other" - our poor parents...

As for our friends, we sincerely hope they will love this idea because either 1) they'll get to unload some old baby stuff they've been meaning to get rid of or 2) they'll realize they are completely off the hook and won't get us anything!

But for our parents, it's bigger. We're asking the grandparents-to-be NOT to buy our little guy ANYTHING new - not to impulse buy the "cutest little snow suit ever" 70% off at Janie and Jack, not to troll Amazon for reprints of their favorite children's books, not to do what is their God given right as grandparents - shower this kid with all of the junk, and plastic products from China, and battery operated toys that they never bought for us!

And worse, ask their friends to do the same.

The grandparents-to-be - we're afraid they might suffer. At least, at first, they'll feel denied.

So, much like the baby name discussions and the wedding planning, we'll talk to them. We'll tell them our ideas, we'll listen to their objections, and then we'll all move on. They will step up (as best they can), they will complain to their friends (we expect nothing less), and in the end, it will work out great. It will be fun. More than fun - it will be really cool.

All that energy they would have spent "buying" might be spent writing little notes, putting together a scrapbook, or babysitting. All that money saved might be put in a college fund, or used to travel to us and spend the weekend in New York City. And all that stuff that would have cluttered our apartment, will just leave more space for hosting family dinners, overnight visitors, and grand-baby #2!

The Registry

We're now 10 weeks away from our due date. 10 weeks away from walking into our apartment with another member of the family, who will need nourishment, shelter and clothing. When we think about the real basics of what a newborn needs - it can't be that much.

I hope to breastfeed, and to be full time parenting for at least the first few months. My husband will be winding down the school year, and we hope my mother and sister-in-law will be around to help with the cooking and cleaning those first few weeks. We hope to be very supported by our extended family and we hope our little guy will feel safe and secure and will be healthy and content.

So, what more do we need?

Originally we thought, my breasts, diapers, a few outfits, and maybe a sling.

But then we realized that maybe a first aid kit, a nursing pillow, someplace to lay the kid down to sleep (a drawer seemed fine at first, but the grandparents to be didn't "come to this country and work so hard to have their first grandchild sleep in a drawer"), a sun hat, and a few receiving blankets for swaddling would be a good idea.

And while we were thinking about it - a few pairs of socks, bedding, and a car seat would be smart(we were pretty sure that we needed one to take him home from the hospital - we weren't sure we'd be up for taking the subway).

And then at that point our friends starting chiming in about their favorite, must-have baby products - a glider chair, a hooded towel, a baby bathtub, an automatic rocking swing, a bathing suit, a second and third sling in case we didn't like the first one, footed pajamas, burping cloths, a diaper pad.

Well, these things weren't necessary. For sure they weren't. But they did seem useful and since we were borrowing them anyway, why not make our lives a little easier and our baby that much more comfortable?

At this point we thought back to our rather amorphous motivations. Simply put, we want to attempt to raise our child for one year with 100% borrowed items. Our motivations are many fold yet vague - wanting to tread more lightly on the planet, to save energy, to waste less, to consume less, to build connections with other new parents, to take up less storage space.

We know there is a line between borrowing a really nice baby blanket, and borrowing 4 kinds of strollers; but where is that line? Where do we want to draw it? And who are we as first time parents with a crazy experiment in mind to think that we can?

What about the sweaters my 92-year old grandma is sewing (should we make an exception for handmade items)? Or a few nursing bras for me (they are technically for me, not the baby?) What about baby books? We love books and know that reading to a child is very important, but wouldn't it be better to just go to the library than buy a bunch of used books? And that would take up less space, too.

And what about cloth vs. disposable diapers? And diaper service vs. washing in the apartment basement? What about trying to raise a diaper free baby?

Back again to our motivations. To challenge ourselves. To approach parenthood with a bit more awareness and a lot more humility.

This is an experiment. In many ways, we just have to see where things go. See what kind of parents we are, what kind of kid we have, where we feel is best to draw the line in the sand, and then move it. And then move it again.

For the time being, here is the list.

And here's a little how to on how to create an "alternative gift registry"

Everything Borrowed

My husband and I are expecting our first child - a boy - this spring. We're late 30-somethings, living in New York City. He's a school teacher, I'm an environmental consultant, mostly for non-profits. We try to do good by the world. We recycle, we sell our old appliances on craigslist, we eat a mostly vegetarian diet, we take public transportation and we try to remember to bring cloth bags to the grocery store.

That said, we consume a lot and we throw away a lot. We're a part of a disposable culture where we order new things on Amazon a few times per month and throw away perfectly good old kitchen cabinets to make way for new ones from Home Depot. Too many weekends are spent organizing our closets filled with things we really don't need, to make room for new things we could probably do without.

And we're bringing a baby into this world. A baby who really needs little more than a few outfits, breast milk and a roof over his head for the first new months, yet his carbon footprint will inevitably be significant - tens of thousands of times more than babies in developing countries.

But we want the best for this baby - and for us! We want him to have cute little summer hats and a cozy bassinet. We want to be able to carry him around in a really comfortable sling and leave him with a relative and a bottle so we can go to the movies now and then.

As a result, what we're proposing to do is not carbon neutral. It's not the lowest impact possible, nor is it going to completely simplify our lives and de-clutter our closets. What it will do - we hope - is to help us strive towards consuming less and disposing less. We hope it will have a net positive impact on the environment, on our wallets and on our storage space. We hope that it will help us build community and enable us to begin parenthood with a big dose of awareness and humility.

And we hope that it will inspire us to continue to set goals for ourselves that help us leave the world a little better than we found it. We'll see.