Without any expectation we are acutely aware that many people will want to buy a gift for Baby Bitchem. We are politely asking for only immediate family to buy us anything.

We have been incredibly lucky to have lots of usable baby stuff passed on to us already and even more grateful to have a network of friends and family that we know will be there for us in run up to Baby Bitchem's arrival and afterwards.

Therefore if you are not immediate family our strong preference is to ask for a donation to Home-Start Portsmouth.

Home-Start is an excellent local charity, close to us in importance (Amy, my sister is a Project Manager there) as it does so much locally to Portsmouth to provide early years support to those who don't have the network that we are so lucky to have.

As they say, having children "takes a village" and Home-Start is quite often that village and support to parents and children.
We would love to pay forward your love to Home-Start rather than to us or Baby Bitchem.

Contributions will help Home-Start provide those extras for families, snacks at playgroup, training for their expert volunteers or providing an item a family may desperately need.

We wanted to get this message out early, to manage expectations.

We will be making our own donation after Baby Bitchems arrival, as we are incredibly grateful for clothes/cots/prams/car seats that have been passed onto us already.

Thank you, Ben and Alice xxx

*Baby Bitchem (a combo of our surnames, Brindley and Mitchem!)