There’s a cake for pretty much everything these days.
In parenting circles, it seems no child’s birthday party is complete without the perfectly coordinating cake to go along with the theme. We’ve seen Minion cakes, cakes shaped as Barbie dolls, cakes made to look like Lego castles and all manner of Frozen cakes. For baby showers, you can easily find ideas on Pinterest for the perfect cake shaped like a baby carriage, baby bump or even diapered baby bums.
But there’s one baby shower confection that really, well, takes the cake: the C-section cake.
Yep, some moms (or their unusually creative friends/shower planners, we should say) are showing up the traditional blue- or pink-dotted cake with a fondant creation depicting a cesarean section. These cakes show baby emerging out of the womb or sticking their little hands and feet right out of mom’s belly.
You can find full galleries of these cakes at a recent post from The Stir and at Cake Wrecks.
Some are sort of cute. Others are downright disturbing.
When it comes to the especially gory cakes, we have to wonder: Who thought this was a good idea? The miracle of childbirth – whatever the method of birth – is certainly beautiful and worthy of celebration. But the images that come to mind for moms who’ve had a C-section probably look nothing like the images these cakes offer up.
Instead, new moms probably remember seeing their baby’s adorable little face for the first time, hearing baby’s first cry or meeting baby’s eyes for the first time. The beauty of a new life entering the world is made to look like no more than a bloody surgical procedure at best and an actual nightmare at worst. Is that really how anyone would choose to honor a mom-to-be at her baby shower?
Of course, the concept of a themed cake for any occasion isn’t really new. When my friend donated a kidney to her husband, her sister-in-law made a lovely kidney-shaped cake that served as a strange – but appropriate – centerpiece for her goodbye-kidney party. The appearance of our anatomy isn’t always picture-perfect and if the cake gives the person about to have surgery a little laugh, then who are we to judge?
Besides, expectant moms need cesarean sections for a variety of medical reasons and maybe a corresponding cake helps lighten the topic a bit. Or, as we suspect, maybe these cakes were never actually featured at a baby shower at all and instead were just made as a joke. The way some of them look, we just aren’t buying that they were ever front and center at an actual baby celebration.
What do you think of C-section cakes? Tell us in the comments section below.
Photo courtesy of The Stir
