Cook County Community Baby Shower offers resources, baby item swap

Community organizations serving families from pregnancy through preschool are hosting a Community Baby Shower on Sept. 19 at the Cook County Community Center. Families are invited to drop in anytime during the event, and no registration is required.

The event offers an opportunity for people to learn about community resources, from health care to child care, whether they already have young children or are planning to start a family.

“Maybe you’ve just moved to town, and you’re like, maybe we’re going to have kids at some point, and I want to know what’s available as far as everything from prenatal health care to mental health supports to opportunities to socialize with other families, learning opportunities like ECFE, which is Early Childhood Family Education, resources from Extension, child care — you name it — all of those sorts of organizations and people are going to come together at this event,” University of Minnesota Extension educator Sarah Waddle told WTIP. “So it’s really open to anyone.”

Sawtooth Mountain Clinic will be among the organizations participating. When Waddle approached parent-child nurse Angie Works about the event, Works saw an opportunity to help parents of young children who can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amount of information available.

“Because you don’t know what you don’t know when you don’t know it,” Works told WTIP. “And if you don’t know that a certain resource that could help you exists, you won’t be able to take part in it. So it’s great to come and see what is available.”

Organizations and topics represented at the event will include car seat safety, family home visiting, prenatal care services, childbirth education, the Women, Infants and Children program, Early Childhood Family Education, early childhood screenings, Sawtooth Mountain Preschool, Help Me Grow, the Oral Health Task Force, the Cook County YMCA, Grand Portage Head Start, Music Together classes, teen babysitters, early literacy programs, prenatal and baby chiropractic care, University of Minnesota Extension and county children and family social services.

There will also be a baby item swap for families looking to pick up items for a future child, exchange infant items or donate items they no longer need.

Early childhood can be an isolating time for families, but Waddle said Cook County has many resources that can help families build connections and find support.

“It just takes an entry point to find out to find one of those things, and then to connect to the next, and the next, and then to meet some other families, and then hang out with them more, and then you start seeing each other all over the place,” Waddle said. “And so, even though it has the potential to be an isolating experience. It also has the potential to be this super well-connected and supported community-based experience that I think is maybe even more accessible in a rural place than in a big city where there are so many people.”

The Community Baby Shower will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Sept. 19 at the Cook County Community Center.

WTIP spoke with Waddle and Works about the event, the organizations attending and how easily baby items can take over a house. Audio of the conversation can be found below.

Josh Hinke September 16, 2026