It might not be convenient to have a computer set up at your baby shower or gender reveal party for guests to join your baby pool online. Because of that, we’re excited to release our free printable game cards! (PDF)  They work just like our printable baby pool template, only they’re individual cards instead of one big spreadsheet. (I think that makes them easier to use at parties, not to mention cuter!)

There are four to a sheet of standard letter paper, so you can print as many copies as you need at home and simply cut along the dotted lines. Try placing the cards near your guest sign-in sheet next to a cute basket to drop them in, or pass them out when it’s time to play other shower games.

Guests can make their predictions about the baby’s gender, birth date and time, weight and length, and hair and eye color just like they would online. Then you just collect the cards and add their predictions to your pool later (more on how to do that in this post).

My own baby shower is coming up at the end of the month, and I’m excited to try these out. I think they’ll be handy for older guests who want to join my pool but aren’t computer-savvy (not to mention those busy friends who keep saying “Oh yeah, I need to do that!”).

If you use them for your shower or gender reveal party, let us know what you think! Just leave a comment here or send us an e-mail.

Download the printable baby shower guessing game cards.

Mollee and her husband, Matt, live in Midlothian, Virginia, and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their first baby (a girl!) in May 2013. (Check out her baby pool here.) Although she helps pay the bills as a graphic designer, Mollee’s true passion is for making things with her hands. Find more of her recipes, paintings and crafts at molleemade.com.

We’ve received quite a few e-mails from people asking how friends without e-mail or Facebook can participate in their baby guessing game. I find it hard to believe that people don’t have e-mail, but you never know. It’s also pretty common that people just don’t want to sign up on another website just to guess when your baby will be born. So, we finally got around to adding this feature to the website. Starting today,  pool administrators can now add predictions for their friends and family. You can still invite everyone to enter on their own, but for those who can’t (or for those who are just too lazy) just get their prediction and add it for them!

Add predictions to your baby pool without asking friends and family to sign up

You could print out our baby pool template and pass it around at your baby shower. No one needs to sign up, just collect the form and add the predictions to your pool through the Pool Settings tab.

Here’s how:

1. Login to your account and go to the pool you want to add predictions to.
2. Click the “Pool Settings” tab.
3. On the submenu, click the “Add Predictions” tab.
4. Click the purple button that says “Click here to enter a prediction for someone else!”
5. Enter their prediction info. (You must enter their first name, last name, gender prediction, relation to the baby, weight prediction, length prediction, hair color prediction and eye color prediction.)
6. Click save and you’ll be taken to the All Predictions page and see the new prediction.

You can add as many predictions as you want, just repeat the steps above for each new guess.

Keep Asking People to Sign-Up to Get the Full Experience

I’m sure there will always be people who don’t want to sign-up on another website. But, I also want to remind everyone that there are definite benefits to having an account on the website and entering your own predictions:

1. Get an email notification when the baby is born, so you can come back and see who won the baby pool.
2. Leave a personal note for the family and friends on the message stream.
3. Get updates on the pregnancy if the parents are posting messages to the pool.
4. If you have an account, you can keep a list of all the pools you participated in on the My Pools page.
5. A future update will allow everyone to change their predictions on their own (by sacrificing some points from their final score).

In other words, this feature will make it easier for everyone to participate, with or without email or Facebook, but you should still encourage people to sign up and enter their own predictions. It just makes it more fun!

Having Trouble?

We’ve tested this out and it’s working, but we have a small staff of 2 people, so it’s likely some things might not work properly. If you have trouble with this feature (or anything else on the website), please let us know: help@whatsinmybelly.com

Provide for the Baby’s Future Education

If you’re putting some real cash into the baby pool, why not split the pot with the baby? I have good friends expecting a baby, so I secretly started a baby pool for them. Everyone who is participating is asked to chip in at least $10. The winner of the pool takes half the pot and the other half will go into a savings bond in the baby’s name, or it will go to the parents to start out their Virginia 529 plan for the baby’s school savings. What better way to start saving for college?

Make it Part of the Baby Shower

With WhatsInMyBelly.com, it’s easy to integrate your baby pool into the baby shower. After you create your pool, look under the Share tab of your pool page, then click on Share on Paper, and you’ll find an option to print out cards to hand out to your guests at the party. Or, simply pass around a laptop or iPad and let people join your pool on the spot. It’s a fun way to keep involved through the birth of your new addition.

Add Fun “Thank You” Prizes

When you’re expecting a baby, many expecting parents get tons of gifts at multiple baby showers. How do you say “Thank you” to all your friends and family for the outpouring of love? You’d go broke trying to buy everyone a nice gift, so why not make a game of the thanks? For everyone who attends your baby shower, give them a pick in your pool, and offer up one nice gift to the winner. Prizes that everyone loves could be as simple as a restaurant gift card. Be creative and have fun with it. With out first child’s baby pool we made buttons reading “I am the Baby Whisperer” to the top 3 participants. With our second child we gave the person who finished last in the pool a gag gift. I guess we’d call him “The Baby Screamer?” (That one goes out to Sherry.)