Do you just ship a gift to their home? Or would you go with something smaller they can get home with them fairly easily?

I'm attending a shower in a few weeks for friends of mine who live down south (we're in Michigan) and they're registered at Babies R Us, so I do have the ability to ship something straight to their home free of charge. I was thinking that I wanted to also bring something small to the shower for her to open, but since I've never had an out of state shower I guess I'm just not sure if that would be thoughtful or just kind of a pain for the parents-to-be to have more stuff to bring back home with them.

I was thinking about, for the smaller gift, just putting together a little gift package for her of helpful postpartum things, like breastfeeding pads and lanolin, plus things for the baby that she didn't register for but no one wants to have to run out and buy when you end up needing them - teething tablets, infant motrin, gripe water, saline spray, Nosefrida...stuff like that. Other than the breastfeeding pads none of that was on her registry, but it seems like stuff every mom would need. Or is it better to just get small registry items instead?

Sorry, I know I'm way over-analyzing this. I was the first of my group of friends to have a little one, so I've only been on the receiving end of shower gifts!