Remember: It starts with you. Do your part by doing nothing.
There is no greater waste of time in the final months of your pregnancy than the writing of thank-you notes. Instead of enjoying your life’s final eight-hour stretches of sleep, you’re looking for stamps, picking out cards, and remembering how to write in cursive. You’re trying to match gifts to givers—and you’re down to the last two friends. One gave you a box of Huggies, and the other, bedding from Pottery Barn Kids, and you can’t remember who gave what.
Factor in the energy-suck that comes from months of procrastination, and you will regret ever getting pregnant in the first place.
DON’T EXPECT YOURSELF TO WRITE THEM, AND DON’T FEEL GUILTY.
The minute you open a gift, thank your friend profusely in person. Tell her that she will go unthanked in print. That is your gift to her, because receiving a thank-you note is almost as torturous as writing one.
How long are you supposed to keep someone’s thank-you note? A week, a year? Until you feel thanked? Where does one keep it? In the living room, on an end table, next to that figurine that gives you the creeps, or on the refrigerator, beside the Ambien prescription? Or should you keep it forever, in hopes that its sender is implicated in a sex scandal, or wins American Idol? It’s too much to worry about.
Furthermore, the thank-you note is a class divider. In an era when an e-mail would suffice, the author of a thank-you note reminds her recipient that she has time on her hands and a nanny to pick up the kids. She’s not ending her days in an exhausted heap, watching Friends reruns and falling asleep with her makeup still on. Thank-you notes are the modern-day equivalent of pale skin and uncalloused hands.
This tradition must end.
Remember: It starts with you. Do your part by doing nothing.