Gift for Friends Who Just Became Parents

Several friends, none of you coordinating

Before choosing anything, it helps to look at the situation from the receiving end. A couple with a first baby has, typically, a circle of six to twelve friends who will each buy something, plus family, plus colleagues. None of those friends is coordinating with the others. Each one independently reasons their way to a sensible gift, and because they are all sensible people applying the same reasoning to the same facts, they converge. The result is predictable: several hampers, a run of similar-priced candles, two or three of the same popular baby item, and a couple of things that are lovely and identical. Nobody has done anything wrong, and the household still ends up with a distribution rather than a set. There are exactly two ways to avoid being part of that distribution, and both are easy. The first is to coordinate with one other person - not the whole group, which never works, just one friend you can message. Two friends pooling can buy one thing that lasts instead of two things that overlap, and three can buy something genuinely substantial. This is the better route if you can manage it, because the household gains a single good object rather than two adequate ones, and adequate objects still need shelves. A reed diffuser at seven hundred and forty-nine to eight hundred and forty-nine rupees is the natural two-person purchase: Morning Freshness seven hundred and forty-nine, Garden Bloom and Evening Calm seven hundred and ninety-nine, Mountain Breeze and Fresh Brew eight hundred and forty-nine, each using its own alcohol-free reed oil drawn up rattan by capillary action, running two or three months with nothing to do. For three people, the 130ml size from one thousand two hundred and forty-nine rupees, or a diffuser with a refill at two thousand three hundred and ninety-nine for three hundred millilitres - which is a gift still working next year. It goes at the entrance or in the living room, which is where they will be receiving visitors for months. Not a nursery: SOSA makes no products for babies or children, and nothing in this range is intended for a nursery, a cot, a pram or a baby's belongings. The second route, for when coordination is impossible, is to deliberately choose the category your group will not choose. That requires knowing which categories are crowded, and they are the same in every friendship group: baby clothes, soft toys, hampers, and something nice for the mother. Those four will be covered several times over. The uncontested category, almost without exception, is the car. A hanging car perfume at four hundred and forty-nine to five hundred and nine rupees is chosen by virtually nobody, and it is genuinely useful in a way most gifts are not: in the months after a first baby a startling share of the household's hours happens in a vehicle - the paediatrician, the pharmacy at eleven at night, relatives collected from the station, the shopping, and the drive around the block at midnight with a baby who will not settle. It needs no taste, occupies no space in a flat that has none, and is used by whichever of them is driving. Jasmine is four hundred and forty-nine, Lavender and Sandalwood four hundred and seventy-nine, Icy Mint four hundred and eighty-nine, Lemon four hundred and ninety-nine, Vetiver, Sea Breeze and Oud five hundred and nine. Two-piece combinations at eight hundred and ninety-nine to nine hundred and forty-nine give them a register each. There is a second reason to take this category, and it is the strongest argument on the page. In most households the father does a large share of that driving, and he will have received nothing at all from anybody - not because people think less of him, but because no shop stocks a shelf for fathers and so the purchase is never prompted. Your group of friends will, between them, give eight or nine gifts, and unless somebody deliberately chooses otherwise, every single one will be addressed to the baby or the mother. Being the person who fixes that costs four hundred and forty-nine rupees. Two other uncrowded picks. The Attar Trio at one thousand and fifty-five rupees is three alcohol-free 12ml attars in one box, which divides cleanly - one each, chosen by them rather than assigned by you - and it is a format almost nobody thinks of. Each is undiluted perfume oil with no alcohol carrier, so it opens quietly and stays within an arm's length rather than filling a room, which many people find is what they want around a small baby, as a matter of comfort and preference. Adaa is bergamot, green cardamom, jasmine sambac and white musk; Ameeri is Taif rose with Indian sandalwood; Mastani is night jasmine and Damask rose; Nawaab is a white oud composition with Mysore sandalwood and Kashmir saffron rather than a dehn al oud distillate. And a solid perfume at four hundred and fifty-nine to five hundred and forty-nine rupees is the most practical personal gift in the range: fifteen grams of alcohol-free balm in a flat compact, thumb to open, finger to apply, four seconds, one hand, possible while holding a baby, with nothing to spill and no cap to lose. Nothing on this page is health, medical or safety advice, and no product is described as safe or unsafe around anybody in particular. Two practical rules whichever route you take. Nothing that needs assembling, positioning or deciding about, because their surfaces are gone and their spare decisions have run out. And consider the timing, which is the cheapest advantage available: every gift from every friend will arrive in the same fortnight, when they can least absorb any of it, and then the wave stops dead at about six weeks. If you send yours at six or eight weeks instead, it is not only in an uncrowded category, it is in an uncrowded week - and that is worth more than doubling what you spend.

Take the category nobody will take

Uncontested categories, and the pooled option if you can reach one other friend. Nothing here needs assembling, and nothing is for a nursery.

Related: best gifts for new parents as a couple, gifts that aren't baby products and thoughtful gifts after the baby arrives. By relationship, for a best friend who just became a mum. Also the complete guide by relationship and budget. Shop the car perfumes from ₹449, the reed diffusers from ₹749 and the attars from ₹379.

The SOSA return gift ladder

Everything here is handmade in small batches in India, and a portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali. The ladder below runs from the cheapest thing SOSA makes to the tier worth giving close friends. Bulk quantities are quoted on WhatsApp at ₹+91 96192 18531 rather than published, because the right rate depends on quantity, mix and date.

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