I’ll tell you what – there are times when being obsessive-compulsive can come in handy, such as the case of how an OCD individual (other than me, of course) by some fate found himself in the financial industry, particularly in stock trading. His ability to focus all his attention on one thing rather obsessively in this particular instance proved to be an advantage in that he was able to pick up a pattern that would go on to make him super-rich, having foreseen an impending change in the housing market.

I seem to have stretched it a bit too far from the topic with my opening discussion, but I only do so in order to make my point.

So anyway, what I’m getting at is that it’s a world of two extremes with regards to being obsessive compulsive. When it’s not quite advantageous, something as seemingly simple as picking out a gift to celebrate the arrival of a loved one’s newborn baby becomes a real chore. It becomes a serious conundrum which has you mulling over so many different things which should probably otherwise not even be an issue at all.

For example, I once sat in my bedroom with about 60 different items sprawled over my bed as possible gifts for a newborn baby, but I ended up going out to ultimately buy something else because of the effects of my OCD mind! I remember this one stuffed lion key-ring which was part of a baby gift set I bought at the airport. It was all kinds of cute, except the material used to make up the lion’s mane came off so easily with the most half-baked of efforts to pull it out! I mean that’s a hazard if ever there was one and I perhaps should have known better than to have sought to buy baby gifts at the airport!

Anyway, the important thing with us OCD minds is that as a coping mechanism we have to try and formulate some kind of takeaway lesson from each of these ‘episodes’ we have. So for example, next time I need to source gifts for babies I won’t be combing through each of 60 items I bought, only to decide not to go with any of those, which I’d already bought, mind you…

We learn and we move on and it’s great to be able to share our rather unique experiences with people for whom such experiences would never pose any problems.

So what I learned though as far as newborn baby gifts is that you should just keep it simple. Don’t over-think things too much, albeit this is something that can be hard not to do.

It’s the thought that counts and when you’re buying a gift for a newborn baby, their natural oblivion to the significance of the ritual should then have you considering the mother (or the parent) as a beneficiary of the value of the gift as well. A typical baby gift basket from the likes of Broadway Basketeers will do to brighten up baby’s life and make the life of the parents easier, for example.