Your daughter has had a baby, and the card is far harder to write than it ought to be. Everybody else in the family gets to be straightforwardly delighted. You are the person who has known her since she was the one in the cot, and every sentence that arrives sounds either too big for a card or too much like advice. It is also the day you became a grandparent, which is its own quiet event and has no card of its own. The wishes below are written from exactly that position: a few short lines for the card itself, longer messages from Mum and from Dad separately and from the two of you together, something for a first grandchild, and a handful of sentences for a christening or a naming day, when you have to say it out loud in front of people and keep it brief. None of them tell her how to look after the baby. She has quite enough of that already.
What to write in the card: short lines
Our first thought this morning was you, not the baby. Both of you are very much loved.
Welcome to the newest member of this family, and well done to its newest mother.
We are enormously proud of you today, love, and have been for a good while now.
A new person in the world, and you brought them here. We are thrilled for the pair of you.
So pleased for you both. Ring us when you feel like it, and not a moment before.
To our daughter, who has just done the hardest thing she will ever do. With all our love.
This has been a very happy house since your call came through. Well done, both of you.
Every good wish to the three of you. We will be there when wanted and gone when not.
Nothing to say that is not obvious, so: we love you, we are proud, and we are on the phone.
Congratulations. Whatever help you want, ask us plainly. We would far rather be told than guess.
A very small person and a very large day. We have thought about little else since.
With love to you and to the baby, from two people who could not possibly be more pleased.
From Mum
I have been trying to write this since your message and everything I put down sounds too small for it. So, plainly: I am proud of you, I love you, and I am here for whatever version of help you want — the useful kind, not the interfering kind. Tell me which it is and that is exactly what I will do.
I looked at you holding the baby and had to leave the room for a minute, which I am fairly sure you noticed. It was not sadness. It was seeing the two of you together and understanding, all at once, that you are somebody’s mother now and always will be. Every possible good wish, my darling.
Congratulations, love. I remember the week you were born far more clearly than I remember most of last year, and I rather suspect you will find the same. Whatever these first weeks turn out to be like, you can ring me at any hour, and you do not have to be coping when you do.
You have done something extraordinary and you will be told so roughly forty times this week, so I shall say the other thing instead. I like you enormously, quite apart from being your mother, and I am looking forward to knowing you as somebody’s mum. All my love to the three of you.
There is nothing I can tell you that you will not work out for yourself, and probably better than I did. What I can offer is a hot meal, a clean kitchen and somebody to hold the baby while you sleep. Say the word and I will come; say the word and I will stay away. Both are entirely fine.
Well done, darling. Not for the birth — for the whole of this last year, which I know has been a great deal to carry. You have handled it with more sense than I would have had at your age. Now let people look after you for a while, starting with me.
From Dad
Congratulations, love. Your mother has written you something proper, so this is the short version: I am very proud of you, I always have been, and today rather more than usual. Ring if anything needs moving, fixing, collecting or paying for.
I have never been much good at this sort of card. What I want to say is that I looked at you today and saw the person you have become, who is somebody I would like even if you were not mine. Well done. Do take care of yourself as well as the baby.
The first time I held you I had no idea what I was doing, and nobody told me that was normal. So I shall tell you: nobody knows what they are doing, and it works out anyway. I am on the end of the phone at any hour, including the awkward ones.
To my daughter, from a slightly stunned father. It has taken me a day or so to take it in. All I really want to say is that I am proud of you, I am glad you are all right, and I will drive over whenever you want and go home the moment you say.
You will get a great deal of advice this week and none of it will be from me. Instead, an offer: shopping, lifts, the garden, the dull paperwork nobody has the energy for. That is the sort of thing I am useful for, and I would like to be useful. Very well done, love.
Not a man of many words, as you know. Two of them: well done. Two more: I am proud. And a standing offer with no expiry on it — whatever needs doing, I will do it, and I will not tell you how to do anything else.
From both of us
From the pair of us, with a good deal more love than a card will hold: congratulations. We are so pleased, and so proud, and slightly bewildered to find ourselves at this end of it. Tell us what you need and we will do that and nothing else.
We have both read this over and neither of us can improve it, so it stands. You have given this family a new person and given us a grandchild, and we are not sure which of the two has moved us more. All our love to the three of you.
Your mum and I want you to know that whatever the next few months look like, you are not doing them on your own. Help is available on request and will not turn up uninvited. Congratulations, love. Today is a very good day in this house.
To our daughter and to the newest arrival. We have been remarkably restrained about telling people and have now given up entirely. Every good wish to you both, and when you have a spare hand, do send us a photograph.
Both of us send our love. We had a long conversation last night about how quickly all of it has gone, which is precisely the sort of thing your grandparents used to say and we swore we never would. We are so pleased for you, darling.
From us both: well done, and welcome to the small person. We would like to be the sort of grandparents who get asked rather than the sort who simply appear. So ask. We can be there within the hour.
On becoming a grandparent yourself
There is no card for what happened to us today, so this one will have to do both jobs. You became a mother and we became grandparents inside the same half hour, and of the two events yours is plainly the greater. Even so: thank you for making us something new at our age.
We have been trying the word grandmother out all afternoon and neither of us is used to it yet. It will settle. What has already settled is the feeling underneath it, which is quiet, large and entirely unexpected. Congratulations, love.
I always assumed that becoming a grandparent would make me feel old. It has not, particularly. What it has done is make the whole business of getting older look considerably more worthwhile. Thank you, darling, and very well done indeed.
Your father has been unbearable since the news came through and I am not a great deal better. We shall calm down eventually. In the meantime, know that you have made two people extremely happy without having to do anything at all beyond what you were already doing.
Congratulations, love. From today you are a mother and I am a grandmother, and I fully intend to be the useful sort — the one who takes the pram out for an hour so that you can have a bath, rather than the one with opinions. Hold me to that.
It seems only fair to warn you that we are going to be insufferable about this child. We will try to keep it within the family. All our love to you today, and thank you for something we did not know we had been waiting for.
For a first grandchild
Our first grandchild and your first baby, which means that none of us has done this before. We shall work it out the way we worked out everything else: badly at first and then perfectly well. Congratulations, darling. It is a very good day.
The first one changes the shape of a family, and ours changed at some point in the small hours of this morning. Welcome to the newest member of it, and every good wish to the woman who brought them here. We are so proud of you.
We have kept a few things from when you were small. Nothing useful — a blanket, some photographs, a hat that is frankly hideous. They are yours if you want them and no obligation whatsoever if you do not. Our first grandchild, and we are delighted.
A first grandchild, and we have discovered that the feeling is nothing like the way people describe it. It is less dramatic and a good deal deeper. Thank you for it, and well done. You have had a long year, and today it is worth it.
To our daughter, on the day she made us grandparents for the first time. We have had a lot of good news over the years and this is comfortably the best of it. Enjoy this week, ignore everybody, and tell us when you would like company.
We have been parents for a long time and grandparents for a day, and the second is much easier. All of the pleasure, none of the responsibility, and we get to hand them back at teatime. Thank you, darling. We are immensely proud of you.
A few words at a christening or naming day
I shall be brief, because everybody wants to get to the food. We are here for a very small person who has no idea what is going on, and for her parents, who have had a demanding few months and have handled it well. Thank you all for coming.
Two sentences and then I will sit down. Our family has a new member and our daughter has a new job, and both of those are worth marking properly. To her, to her partner, and to the little one who has slept through most of this.
I am told I have thirty seconds. Thank you all for coming, some of you a very long way. To my daughter, of whom I am prouder today than I have managed to tell her, and to the newest name in this family. Please, do have another.
A short word, since the point of today is the baby rather than the speeches. Welcome to the family, and to the parents: whatever you need, this room is full of people who would be glad to be asked. To the three of you.
Just briefly. Naming a child is one of the few genuinely old things we still do, and it is good to be doing it surrounded by this lot. To our grandchild, welcome, and to the two people holding them, who look tired and extremely happy.
I will keep this shorter than the last one I gave. Thank you for coming; thank you to my daughter for the last few months, which have not been easy; and welcome to the newest person in the room, who is asleep and therefore the most sensible of us.
Questions and answers
This is our first grandchild and we have not settled on what we want to be called. Does that belong in the card?
Only as a light aside, if at all. The card is about her and the baby, and a paragraph about your own name pulls the attention across the room. A single clause does the whole job — signed ‘Granny, apparently’ or ‘still getting used to Grandad’ — and it tends to be the line she quotes back to people. What is worth doing separately, a few weeks later, is agreeing it properly: the other set of grandparents may have taken the obvious name, children eventually invent their own regardless, and it is far easier to settle before anybody has committed to anything. Raise it in conversation rather than in writing, and let her have an opinion.
The card is from both of us, but only one of us ever writes. Should her father add something of his own?
Yes, even if it runs to three lines. A card signed by two people in one handwriting reads as one person’s card with a name added at the bottom, and daughters notice. It does not need to match in length or in tone: a short, practical offer of help in his own words is worth more than a paragraph he has been talked into. If he genuinely finds it impossible, a single line at the bottom in his hand will do, provided it is something he would actually say out loud rather than a borrowed sentiment. The alternative that works well is two cards, one from each of you, given together and deliberately different.
The birth was difficult, or nothing went the way she had planned it. What do you write then?
Address her, not the delivery. Say that you are glad she is all right, that you are proud of her and that you are available, and leave out any account of how it went, including reassurances that it does not matter. It may well matter a great deal to her, and a card is the wrong place to settle that. Avoid comparisons with your own experience, however sympathetic the intention, because they invite her to measure one against the other at a point when she has no appetite for it. If she wants to talk about the birth she will raise it, probably more than once, and the useful thing then is to listen without supplying a lesson.
There is a christening or naming day and I have been asked to say a few words. How long, and how is it different from the card?
A minute, ninety seconds at the outside, and standing up for less time than people expected is always forgiven. The card is private and can be as fond as you like; the words in the room are public, so they thank the guests, name the child and give the parents one sentence of credit before you sit down. Anything you would only say to your daughter alone belongs in the card. Two practical points: say the baby’s name out loud at least once, because half the room is still learning it, and finish on a clear line so that people know to raise a glass rather than waiting for more.
How do you tell her you are proud of her without it sounding like a verdict on how she is getting on?
Attach the pride to something already finished rather than to something in progress. Pointed at the present tense, ‘I am proud of you’ invites her to wonder what you have been observing and whether the assessment might go the other way next week. Pointed at the last year — the pregnancy, the move, the job she held down, the way she handled bad news — it is simply a statement about the past, and she can accept it without having to do anything. The same applies to remarks about the baby’s routine or sleeping: they sound like marks awarded, and they set the next conversation up as a report. Praise what she has been through, not how she is performing.