A baby shower is the sort of celebration a mom never forgets. With friends, family, food and presents, it’s a chance to feel honored and even pretty no matter how swollen her ankles. Sadly, it’s an experience some moms in Central Oregon might miss, for a whole variety of reasons.

That’s about to change. A community baby shower — actually, a tri-county baby shower — will be held Friday, Sept. 28, and Saturday, Sept. 29, across Central Oregon. The Friday events will be in La Pine at the Park & Recreation office on First Street; Prineville at the 4-H Clover building on Lynn Boulevard; and Warm Springs at the Boys & Girls Club Gym on Wasco Street, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Saturday events will be in Redmond at the Redmond Grange on Kalama Avenue; Bend at St. Charles Medical Center; and Madras at the Madras Performing Arts Center on Buff Street during the same hours.

Erin Hoar, regional coordinator for perinatal education programs in Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties, says next month’s events are all about reaching out and celebrating women who might otherwise not have a shower.

Hoar has something more elaborate in mind than an hour of playing games and opening gifts. Instead, the showers will be drop-in affairs, with, she hopes, a wide range of activities for those who attend.

If she gets her wish, pregnant women and moms with babies up to about a month old may choose to have a chair massage, have pictures taken or get their nails done, all provided, Hoar hopes, by volunteers in those businesses. There will be food, of course, and games — no shower would be complete without them — but guests can also learn the latest in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome prevention, or find out about the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. They can even learn the correct way to install an infant seat in a car so baby is as safe as can be.

There will be gifts, as well. Just what depends upon how generous you and I and our friends are feeling.

Having a baby these days is not cheap. The most inexpensive infant car seats are upward of $50, and used seats may either fail to meet current safety standards or have been damaged. That’s one reason many secondhand and thrift stores will not sell them and why Hoar can accept only new ones.

Convertible seats, which also fit older kids, are more expensive, but they’re usable as a child grows. Babies also need a baby tub so they can be bathed relatively easily.

Some of the gifts Hoar and her group are collecting are new to me — I’m a 1980s-era mother, and equipment has changed in the intervening years.

Pack and plays, for example, are a combination playpen and bed, easy to handle and designed to travel with the family. Swaddling cloths, too, are newly popular, though surely not new — they’re even mentioned in the Bible.

Then there are the things you might overlook, such as unopened shampoos designed not to burn little eyes, powder, diaper rash cream, baby wipes and so on, and diaper bags to tote them in. They may not sound particularly special, but they are particularly useful. When you consider that a newborn urinates roughly 20 times a day, and parents change diapers about a dozen times daily for the first month of a baby’s life, it takes a lot of supplies simply to stay even.

The group also is looking for such things as gift cards to grocery stores, which will be raffled off. That may not sound like such a big deal, but there are times when a $25 grocery store gift card can be a real lifesaver. Unopened, nonperishable food also is welcome, Hoar says.

Those of us who can’t provide a service and want to help can donate gifts. They need to be unwrapped and in original packaging and can be taken to your county health department. If you have a service you’d like to offer, that’s great, too. Or, we can volunteer at one of the events, or both. Whatever we do, our participation will help make the community baby shower a success.

— Janet Stevens is deputy editor of The Bulletin. Contact: 541-617-7821, jstevens@bendbulletin.com