What to write in a baby shower book, when the baby is not born yet

Almost every inscription at a shower is addressed to the parents, and almost every one of them is read once, that afternoon, in a room full of wrapping paper. The child reads it at seven, and again at fifteen, and once more when somebody is clearing out a house - and every one of those times it matters who it was written to.

That is the whole trick, and it is why a shower inscription is easier than it looks. You are not writing a message of congratulation. You are writing the earliest surviving evidence that you were glad, before there was anybody there to be glad about.

Say who you are, in the words the child will eventually use for you - "from Rachel, who works with your mum" outlives "love R x" by about forty years. Then date it. A dedication with a date on it stops being a nice thought and becomes a document.

If the book is for a birthday, a christening, a first day of school or a grandchild rather than a shower, the same rules and thirty more lines are sorted by occasion here. Take a look

This is the thing that actually stops people, and the listicles skip it: at a shower the name is often undecided, or decided and being kept quiet. You cannot write "For Sophie" to a baby who might be Theo.

Leave the gap. Write the line with a space where the name goes and the parents will fill it in within the month - they will be delighted to, because it makes the book theirs to finish. If a blank looks unfinished to you, "For you" is a real address and reads as deliberate: "For you, before we knew what to call you."

What not to use is "Little One", "Baby Bump", or "Peanut". They are affectionate now and they age into somebody else's inside joke - the child reading it later gets a nickname they never had, from a person they cannot place.

These assume you can be specific, which is the advantage you have over every other guest. One true, particular thing beats any amount of warmth in general.

"For {name} - we have been talking about you for months, and you have not even arrived."

"To {name}: your mum and dad chose you a whole shelf before you could hold your head up. This one is from me."

"For {name}, on the day before everything."

"To {name} - I have known your mother since we were both much worse at everything. She is going to be very good at this."

"For {name}, who is already the most discussed person in three postcodes."

"To {name}: the first of many books, and the first of many people who are glad you are here."

Half the room at a shower is the second ring - a colleague, a partner's friend, a cousin by marriage - and this is the hardest inscription to write, because the honest version feels too thin to put in a book. It is not. A stranger who took the trouble is worth recording, and saying so plainly is better than borrowing an intimacy you do not have.

"For {name}, from someone who works with your mum and has heard about you for months."

"To {name} - we have not met, and I am already on your side."

"For {name}, with best wishes from the office your dad keeps leaving early to get home to."

"To {name}: a book from someone you have not met, who wishes you very well. There will be more of us than you think."

"For {name}, and for the two people who are about to be very tired and very happy."

A short line is not a lesser one. If you are writing in a board book with four square inches of white space, brevity is the format talking, and a single sentence with a name and a date on it does the entire job.

"{name}, this one is yours. It was yours before you got here."

"For {name} - first book, first of many."

"To {name}, with love, before we met."

"For {name}. Read it twice."

"Read this one to your parents at three in the morning. They will need the company." (lighter)

"To {name}: sorry in advance about the singing." (lighter)

"For {name} - your parents think they are ready. They are not. Nobody is. It goes beautifully anyway." (lighter)

"To {name}, who will be taller than me by the time this makes sense." (lighter)

If you would rather start from a line and change it than from a blank page, every line on this site is sorted by occasion and relationship in the dedication tool. Take a look

The family inscriptions are the ones most often left blank, because they feel too big to start. They are also the ones that get kept the longest. Write the small version.

"To {name}, from Grandma, who has been ready for you for a very long time."

"For {name} - from your big brother, who picked this one himself."

"To {name}: your aunt chose this. Your aunt has opinions about books."

"For {name}, from your grandad, who has already bought the smaller football."

"For {name}, from all of us, on the day we celebrated you before you arrived."

The first blank page, top left or centred. Not the inside of the cover - that is where tape, price labels and library stickers end up, and it is the part of a book that gets scuffed first. In a board book, the inside front is usually all you get, so take it and keep the line short.

Pen, not pencil. The whole point of an inscription is that it does not fade, and pencil on the coated stock most children's books use rubs away with handling. Ballpoint is fine; a fine-liner is better and will not emboss the page behind it.

Sign with the name the child will know you by, plus your surname if there is any chance of ambiguity. Four different people at that shower will sign themselves "Auntie". Two of them are not aunts.

The convention has a consequence nobody warns you about: the parents go home with a shelf of twenty books carrying twenty inscriptions, and they read them in one sitting. Anything generic disappears into the pile on the first pass.

So do not write what everyone will write. The set is only worth having because it is twenty different voices, and the one thing you can say that nobody else in that room can is the thing to write. You know how the mother reacted when she found out. You know what the father said on the phone. Put that in.

And if you are hosting rather than attending: ask people to write before they arrive. Inscriptions written standing up at a party, in front of an audience, are the generic ones.

A made-to-order book puts the dedication on its own printed page, set in the same type as the story rather than in your handwriting. That is a real trade: it is legible in forty years and it is not your hand. For a shower gift the handwriting usually wins, which is worth saying on a page published by somebody who sells the printed kind.

The exception is the group gift - when the shower is pooling for one book rather than twenty, a printed dedication page can carry every name from the room, legibly, which no flyleaf can. That is the case where having it typeset is the better answer.

If you have not settled on the book yet, the guide to new-baby gifts covers what survives the first year and what gets put away. Take a look