Inspiration for Bump mail
When my wife was pregnant she suffered a major trauma,that left her broken, both physically and emotionally. To help keep her focused on all the positive things in her life and the strength of becoming a mom I sent her a monthly “Message to My Mommy” - from the baby growing inside her.
After our son was born healthy and my wife began to recover we combined the notes into cards, sending them “from baby” to friends and family that were expecting. The positive response was a way for my wife to connect with and support people that her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder prevented her from seeing.
When my Brother and Sister In Law became pregnant with their second we wanted to help prepare our niece to be a BIG sister, but also celebrate her new role and create a bond with her new sibling. Like most toddlers, she adored lift-the-flap and coloring books, so we incorporated both into monthly cards we sent the Big Sister–to-be. The front of every card is a pregnant Mommy with a lift-the-flap growing belly, which reveals a drawing of her sibling-to-be. We filled the letters with information she could relate to: baby is as big as a soccer ball, baby can hear you sing, baby can do somersaults just like you… Each page contained at least one coloring-page style drawing she could color.
For her parents we rounded up the best advice, suggestions, and activities we could think of on how to prepare their only child to be a Big sister.
The Big Sister-to-be requested the cards as bedtime stories, and her parents cherished the images. They requested something frame-able. So we took the illustrations of tender moments (our niece playing doctor and listening to her Mommy’s pregnant belly with a stethoscope, or standing on her tippy toes to touch Mommy’s growing belly), and turned them into silhouettes with so much emotion, they can be called art. Each silhouette is hand-cut, with the precision of surgical knife, out of one continuous piece of paper. We take pride in our images as well as the attention to detail in each and every cut.
We created other items: Big Sister/Brother shirts, exactly like the ones in the coloring pages of the Big Sister/Brother cards, to excite them for their new role. We thought of ways to celebrate the Big Sister/Brother-to-be, that were both parent-friendly and kid-approved: stickers, temporary tattoos, tote bags, headbands and tutus.
