If you’re pregnant right now and staring down the barrel of newborn life during a pandemic…you’re stressed. How are you supposed to survive those first days, weeks, and months with NO HELP?? Don’t these policy-makers understand that babies don’t wait just because of viruses?

And if you love someone who is pregnant or has just brought a new baby home, you’re feeling helpless, unable to do much to support them besides bringing groceries to their doorstep and waving from the end of the driveway. You wish there were SOMETHING ELSE you could do!

Because I know how hard newborn life can be - AND how difficult it is to find the PERFECT gift, especially when malls and stores are closed! - read on for my list of Calgary businesses who would make an AMAZING newborn gift and are also supporting local, contact-free and social distancing-appropriate!

Best Service-Based Gifts For New Parents

1. Send Groceries

SPUD provides online grocery shopping with free home delivery of fresh produce, local, organic, and sustainable foods in Calgary as well as Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria. SPUD makes it easy to have fresh ingredients and healthy products - and that’s just what a new family needs when they’re trying to support breastfeeding and milk production, maintain energy levels through sleep deprivation, and set good new habits.

2. Send a Pre-Prepped Meal

Dashing Dishes provides ready-to-cook meals that are delicious, nutritious, interesting, convenient, and affordable! Grocery delivery is supremely helpful, but sometimes washing and chopping and cooking is too much to ask after a day of feeding and spit up. Dashing Dishes freezer meals are a dream, allowing you to go directly to stovetop, oven, or crockpot and on to your table without any extra brainpower.

3. Send a Pre-Cooked Meal

As simple as pre-prepped meals are, after a day and night and day and…wait…how many hours have you been awake again?…sometimes even turning on the stove is just too much to ask of a newborn parent. This is where Skip The Dishes comes in. A Skip gift card can be ordered in any customized denomination and delivered by email, and then dinner is as simple as clicking “Order” and waiting to answer the door.

4. Send Help For Fur-Kids

Life for furry family members changes drastically once a new baby comes home, and fur-parents are often left feeling pretty guilty about this. You can help by scheduling a backyard cleanup from Poooh Busters or by getting Fido some exercise courtesy of professional dog runners (yes, runners!) Dog Gone Running.

5. Send Yard Maintenance

Home maintenance chores like lawn mowing and weeding often fall to the bottom of the job list after new baby comes home because they take so much time away from the dual-parent support system. Take this job off their hands by pitching it to the teams at MowSnowPros. Most jobs are scheduled and completed same-day, making it a great last minute option.

6. Send Green Diaper Disposal

Before bags upon bags of diapers pile up in the alley, schedule a weekly diaper pickup from Soiled Diapers Composting Services. Their service works with any kind of disposable diaper - no need to buy anything fancy! - and offers the eco-friendliness of cloth with the convenience of standard disposables. They’ll pick up weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, your choice!

7. Send Weekly Laundry

Nobody probably warned you how WET and stinky newborn life can be. Tower Cleaners can help with their weekly doorstop pickup laundry service. Fill your laundry bag and put it out for pickup once per week, and your laundry will magically be returned to you clean and fresh! Best of all, service appropriate for mom + baby (“small family”) is just $99 a month!

8. Send A Doula

A birth or postpartum doula is still amazingly valuable in these uncertain times. Doulas can help parents navigate newborn schedules, breastfeeding challenges, and the logistics of getting necessary supplies and services during this pandemic.

Now that you know how to give the best service-based gifts ever, go ahead and spoil that new family! In “other ways I can make your life magical and easy,” you can book online RIGHT NOW to explore the gift of a doula service package! It takes just two minutes to confirm a virtual coffee date, leaving you the rest of the afternoon to shop online for “best auntie ever” onesies! ;)

Lindsey Bowns is a professional Calgary doula. adora birth + wellness provides DONA International certified birth doula services, working alongside your local midwife or OB, in hospital or at home.