If you ask Joel Madden, he and Nicole Richie are "just a young couple having a baby."
While their lives might not be quite that simple, the parents-to-be took steps Monday to make things easier for a host of other Los Angeles families at a baby shower celebrating the launch of the Richie-Madden Children's Foundation.
"We're really excited, and we never really get the opportunity to share our lives on a real level with other young couples that are going through the same thing as us," Madden said at a press conference following the shower, during which he and Richie mingled with 100 new and expectant moms.
"Everything in our nursery is going to be in their nursery," Richie, clad in a long gray tank dress that showed off her nearly full-term figure, said. Her first child with Madden is due next month.
As for her fellow young mommy types, who were the recipients of more than $200,000 worth of baby swag, including cribs, strollers, toys, bottles and clothing from Baby Bjorn and Fisher-Price, "the looks on their faces were priceless. Some of them didn't even believe us. They thought we were joking."
The event took place at the Hollywood branch of the Los Angeles Free Clinic, which provides free health care to nearly 25,000 families in L.A. County and whose variety of services, including a neonatal program administered through a partnership with nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, inspired Richie and Madden to lend a hand.
"It's not just us giving to them," Richie, 26, said. "They have something they can give me as well—and that's just a woman talking to another woman about pregnancy, about being a new mom."
The Richie-Madden Children's Foundation—named so because "it's not just Joel and I," Richie said—aims to start new families off on the right foot by providing children not only with material objects but with educational opportunities to aid long-term growth and development.
"Our focus is to improve the lives of people all over the world, but it starts here," Richie said. Both her and Joel's families, including his brother Benji and her dad Lionel, are going to be involved, she said.
Richie also donated the gifts from her Nov. 18 Wizard of Oz-themed shower, thrown by Paris Hilton and Masha Gordon and her sister Sophia, to the foundation. Clinic co-CEO Abby Land gave celebrity party planner Mindy Weiss an extra shout-out for helping to organize the transfer of goodies.
Madden, who wants "Baby Madden" to have the "right priorities" and the "right frame of mind" off the bat, said he and Richie wanted to start making a difference in the place where it all began.
"We grew up in Los Angeles…We love L.A., we love this city, we're happy to be a part of this community," the Good Charlotte frontman said, adding that he and Richie were determined to take all of the attention they got and "refocus it on something positive."
"We never get to open up our lives and share like that," he said. "If our life is being shared, it's being dramatized for the world. We want to hold babies!"
More info can be found at richiemaddenfoundation.com.