The first time I heard the term push present, I was flipping through a gossip magazine, while my mom was checking out at the grocery store. This was a little trick I had learned from her throughout the years. Although, the magazines were meant to be a last-minute splurge for housewives, and career women who needed an escape from reality, my mom would read them in line and then quickly put them back before she cut a check to pay for the groceries. This specific magazine featured a new baby from a celebrity couple and showcased the bracelet that the celebrity woman was gifted by her partner after she gave birth. I love romance (hello, early 2000’s rom-coms 😍) but I’m also not delusional and I know that celebrities can afford luxuries that the rest of us, frankly, don’t have time or money for. I’d never heard of anyone I knew getting a push present but I sure as heck liked the idea.
Many years later, when I was in college, push presents had become more mainstream and one night, became a topic of conversation. In the dining hall, over mushy spaghetti and cheerios, I was surprised to find out that not all my friends thought push presents were as romantic as I did. “I think it’s messed up,” my friend said shaking her head. “A baby is a miracle and giving someone a piece of jewelry for bringing a precious life into the world, devalues the journey. It discounts the experience for women, and for the couple who are trying to create a family.” I thought about that conversation for a long time but I came to a different conclusion than my friends.
The intent of gifts is not to boil down a journey to a physical item, whether it be a life journey celebrated with a birthday gift or a couple’s journey celebrated with anniversary gifts. After all, no piece of jewelry, no matter how expensive, could ever be worth as much as these priceless journeys and all the highs and lows that comprise them. I mean, that would be an impossible order to fill. A gift is only meant to represent a moment in time, a moment of celebration. The intent of a gift is to acknowledge and celebrate a journey we’ve taken on our life path. And one of the most important journeys is raising a tiny human to be the future of our beautiful world.
To me, a push present celebrates a woman’s physical, spiritual, and mental journey that she has taken over the past nine months to create a family. It’s a gift that represents the moment in time where her physical journey is merging into a new shared journey with her partner; the journey of being a parent. And if that’s not something worth celebrating, then I don’t know what is. ❤️
Check out Occasional.ly's Push Present Gift Guide so you can spend less time shopping and more time celebrating your new baby. We always have your back! 😜
