Do you feel lucky today? If you or your guests do, why not have a baby shower betting pool? It's not only a lot of fun to do, but is also one way to get friends really interested in the birth. It's a great activity to have at a baby shower, especially if it's one held in the office or a couples' shower to keep the men from getting bored.
Guests that want to take part in the betting pool have to guess the day and time of the birth, the birth weight or length of the baby, the gender, whether the baby will have hair or not, and other such fun things. Of course, the one who gets most of the information right will win the prize. If you have other sub-categories, there can be odds on them as well.
Before you start a pool, be sure to research all you can about running one. Of course, you can just keep it simple and stick to dates, times, weights, and lengths. To do this, you simply have to print out a graph that has the dates reaching back to two weeks before the due date and two weeks after. These are further divided into the hours of the day. Participants choose a day and time when they think the baby will be born. If the gender is on the pool, too, the choice can simply be highlighted in pink or blue.
If this seems too complicated to make, you can simply use a regular calendar where the participants write down their name on a certain date and give their preferred time, too. You could simply divide each day into pink and blue for the gender or just highlight their names in those colors again.
If money is to be part of the betting pool, the participants can simply bet a dollar on every main category that they want to take part in. Meaning, the more categories they bet on, the more money they put in the pool. Each category can be a dollar, for example, so that it's easy to compute and not so expensive either.
When you don't want to encourage betting, you can just provide a prize for the winner. If you have the other fun categories included, provide smaller gifts for them, too.
Fun categories could be how long the labor may last, what color the baby's eyes or hair might be, if the daddy-to-be freaks out or is calm, and so on. These are for those braver bettors, or those that just want to poke a bit of fun.
After the betting is done, all that everyone needs to do is wait. It's best to update everybody daily, perhaps through your social network like Facebook or MySpace. It's no surprise that those who bet on a lot of categories will be following the mommy-to-be's progress with bated breath.
Now matter how you do your baby shower betting pool or what categories
you decide to put in it, you'll surely have a lot of fun with all
your friends. What a way to have a laugh and to let everybody know
about the baby all at one time.