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.

Moving on…

First, I have to say, I love Katie Bower and her Bower Power Blog. Back in August, I was reading her blog and saw that she was expecting baby #2. So, I contacted her on Facebook and asked if she wanted to run a pool on WhatsInMyBelly.com for her readers. We offered to put up some prizes to make it a little more fun for everyone. Knowing how popular her blog was, I kind of expected her to either not respond at all or come back with a “sure… but what’s in it for me?” Instead, she responded and said she’d love to do it and was excited that her readers would have the chance to get some prizes.

Now, I expected this to be a little popular and drive some new visitors to our website (hopefully a few of which would be pregnant and start a pool of their own), but the response we’ve gotten has been well beyond our expectations.

We launched the first version of WhatsInMyBelly back in March and it’s now in version 2. The website was steadily growing as search engines began to pick it up, and other local media outlets like RichmondMom.com and Macaroni Kid Richmond began to mention us. We’re very thankful for any mention we get out there, but when Katie mentioned her baby pool at the end of this post, our traffic exploded immediately. So much so, that people trying to make a guess in her pool took the site down for about an hour until Daniel worked his magic and got things running again.

October has been a huge month for our website in general, but most of that is due to Katie’s baby pool, which now has 729 predictions. This surpasses my baby pool which held the lead at… 56 predictions (weak, I know). As you can see in the screenshot above, each time Katie mentioned her baby pool on our website, the traffic skyrocketed. Even after the mention we noticed about double the traffic we usually get on an single day.

So, to say the least, we love Katie Bower and her website, and we simply can’t do enough to thank her for running her baby pool on our website. 

There is Still A Little Time to Join the Bower Baby Pool

One of Katie Bower's Pregnancy photos. I took this from her blog, so click the photo to see her blog post with more photos.

Now I also have to mention, if you are reading this before midnight on Halloween, and you haven’t made a guess in her pool, we extended the original deadline to midnight on October 31, so head on over to her pool and make a prediction for your chance to win one of 3 Visa Gift Cards. When you’re done with that go bookmark her blog – it’s well worth the read.

Are You an Expectant Blogger?

So, with the huge success of the Bower Power Baby Pool, I think it goes without saying that we want to do this again. If you have a blog (don’t worry about how many readers you have) and you’re expecting, please e-mail me. We simply don’t have the cash to offer prizes for every pool out there, but if bloggers are using our website and linking to us, we’d like to thank you in some way. If anything, we can link back to your blog. So, get in touch with me and let me know if you have a website and you’re running a pool with us. Send me an e-mail: morgan@whatsinmybelly.com

One More Thing – Tell Us What You Want

This is a bit off topic for this blog post, but we are currently planning the next changes and upgrades to WhatsInMyBelly.com and we want to know what you, the users, would like to see improved on the website. If you have a second, please take this survey. The only required fields are the ones where you pick the new features you like the most, so it will literally only take you a few seconds to do it. Your answers will help us decide what to add to the website next.

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.)

So, how do we get that excited surprise for all our friends and family? Sure you could just get on the phone and start calling everyone or do the ever-popular post to Facebook, but we know you can do better. Here are the top 10 ways to reveal your child’s gender:

1. Cakes, Cupcakes & Cookies… yum!

© SugarDerby

Throwing a gender reveal party is a common way to get everyone together and tell them all at once, but once you have them there, don’t just stand on a table and tell them – take it a step further. Bake a cake and add blue or pink food coloring to the batter. Ice it with white icing or some other neutral color. Once you slice into the cake, everyone will know.

You could also do the same thing with cupcakes – and only change the color of one cupcake. The person who finds the pink or blue cupcake gets to make the announcement! You could also have a prize for the “winner”.

Like cookies? Try this cool chocolate chip cookie idea.

2. Gender Piñata

Similar to the cake idea, you could also buy a baby themed piñata for your gender reveal party and fill it completely with blue or pink goodies.

3. Balloons

Even without a large party, you could reveal the gender to a small group with balloons in various ways. Get black balloons (commonly used for the Over the Hill parties), fill them with helium and pink or blue confetti. Let kids or a special guest pop them for an explosive reveal. If you are having a large party, give everyone a balloon and pop them all after a big count-down.

If you’re not into such a loud scene take pink or blue balloons, fill them with helium and wrap up in a package for one special person to open.

4. Gender Reveal Scratch Off Tickets

If you’re comfortable making your own cards, you can buy scratch off paint online. Make cards that can be given out at a party or a card that can be mailed to family. When they scratch off the area painted over with the scratch-off paint, the gender is revealed!

5. Big Brother/Sister Announcement

So you already have at least one child? Get the Big-brother-to-be in on the excitement. You could take a photo of them in a shirt or holding up a card with the news. Send the photo out by email, put it in a real card to mail out, or simply post it to Facebook.

6. Take a Unique Photo

© Kimberly G Photography

Everyone loves photographs and this is a moment you’ll want to remember. Why not take a photo that announces the gender in a creative way? Like the photo above you could blow some boy or girl confetti into the camera. Or, grab your partner and hold up a sign together. Do you have the board game Scrabble? Hold the letters spelling “boy” or “girl” in your hand near your belly.

7. The Subtle Reveal

If you’re having friends or family over, stack some blocks spelling out “boy” or “girl” and put it in a place you know it will be seen… then wait for them to notice. Or, if you have a wall clock or something else round on the wall, turn it into a male or female symbol with some blue or pink construction paper.

8. Have a Gender Reveal Party

So we’ve listed quite a few different ideas with plenty of variations. Why not make it a big event and throw a Team Blue/Pink party? Have your friends and family come visit and wear pink or blue to show their guess.

Got other ideas that aren’t listed here? Leave it in the comments and we’ll add it to our list.