How wonderful! (Friend adopting a six-day-old boy) A baby shower sounds great, but difficult to pull off. The parents will probably need some quiet time to adjust to the baby, and then they will probably be exhausted and have a messy house since newborns DO have that effect! So, you would want to keep the shower short and easy to get to. With a newborn the parents probably also don't want to have the baby handled by many people and exposed to everyone's bugs. We waited until our baby was two months old before going to any big gatherings. Since we had a winter baby we waited a bit How about something creative? Say, get everyone together and take turns so that someone will bring your friend dinner once a week for the first two months, or do grocery runs or other similar favors. Support is the most valuable thing! Good things for a newborn: I think most folks get too many fancy clothes and too many stuffed animals. Larger sized stuff is nice, and the good useful plain things like onesies (I like the one sthat snap across the front and down the front) and baby washcloths and towels and the inexpensive recieving blankets (BETTER than the heavy expensive ones) and 'jammies. DIAPERS if she is using them.