How Can I Help?

Many moons ago, when Gavin was a baby, I was a nanny for an amazing family. When I started working with the family, they had a 4, 6, and 14 year old. It has been several years since I stopped working for them, but they are still some of my favorite people. 

The oldest of my girls is now a 22, almost 23, year old woman. It's surreal! It is so weird to think that she is the same middle schooler I used to drive to dance class and talk about boys with :) She has a year left of nursing school and a long-term boyfriend with whom she is expecting her first child.

Although the timing is different than they had planned, they are so excited to welcome a baby boy later this year. As soon as I found out she was expecting I started wondering what I could do to help. Aside from being there for her as a friend and giving her mommy advice, was there something I could do to help her?

I recently learned about an amazing website that is EXACTLY what I was looking for! What Friends Do allows you to support your friends and family in ways that support their unique situations. 

Working through an easy set of questions, I was able to set up a support team for Hailey and Sam. Once the team is set up, it is easy to share invitations through email or social media. There is a menu page that allows you to select the kind of help needed.

I think we will definitely be setting up people to bring them meals and help with housework right after baby boy comes! I'm also pumped that we can even arrange for help with taking care of their cat. There is a calendar attached so that you can create a schedule and coordinate efforts with everyone who wants to help. Visitors can even leave a note, make a donation or visit their registry from the home page. 

What Friends Do also has random help suggestions. If you are lacking inspiration in the help department, you can just click through possibilities until you find something you like. There are a ton of unique ideas, like scheduling someone to come play video games with your kid or bringing over puzzles, games, etc.

The day after setting up the team, Jen from What Friends Do reached out to me. She offered to help me come up with some personalized ideas for Hailey and Sam, in addition to offering support with the technical side of setting it all up.

Honestly, I wish I had heard about What Friends Do sooner. Last year, our neighbor lost her husband and this would have been an incredible thing to set up throughout the neighborhood. There are so many situations where all we need is a little help from our friends!