I like going on facebook. Facebook ads are annoying at the best of times, but there’s this one advert I keep ‘hiding’ which keeps popping back up.
It’s for a cover of a sleep positioner for a small baby. A sleep positioner, I might add, that costs over £100. The cover itself is £75. It’s partially my fault. I clicked on the ad once, because the cover is patterned with a load of ferns and it’s pretty. It is not, however, £175 pretty – especially when I can create my own sleep positioner with a rolled-up towel and a fitted sheet…
But there is definitely something sinister about the way items for pregnancy and your kid are marketed at you, that preys on the vulnerability you feel embarking on a position of such hideous responsibility of keeping a baby alive, and hopefully happy.
A lot of women (and men) get sucked into ‘only wanting the best’ for their kid, which usually equates to some spangly item that is grossly overpriced. It helps the parents feel prepared, maybe feeling like they are proving to certain people or to wider society that they can do it, and they will do it well.
Or it’s used as a cure-all. I can’t tell you the amount of things that mothers ‘SWEAR BY’. It’s like those people on the internet who just suggest coconut oil for everything. Dry skin? Bad tummy? Born with 6 toes? Cancer? Coconut oil! I swear by it!
If your baby won’t sleep through the night it is definitely not because IT IS A BABY and that’s one of the things they’re not too hot on, no. It is most definitely because you don’t have a £100 sleep positioner, a sheep that sings harp music and heartbeat sounds and a cot that attaches to your bed and is made of organic hemp.
How the species ever survived without that bloody sheep I don’t know. (Disclaimer: yes, I have one… yes I am thinking about getting the updated one with a motion sensor for the new baby, stop judging me, ok?)
This is not to say that there haven’t been fantastic inventions, made by parents for parents to make everyone’s lives easier. Some of them are honestly ingenious! Like the breast pump which is just a silicone thing you stick on you and it pulls your milk out through suction alone. That was awesome, and about 20 quid.
But it’s the pushiness and the underhand tactics that get to me. You go to a ‘parents information evening’ at a store and come out with a bunch of stuff full price you could have got for TUPPENCE second hand.
The promise of loads of wonderful info and free things (looking at you Emma’s Diary and Bounty) when actually all that happens is your details are sold willy nilly for a lifetime of spam emails and leaflets. All for a 10 pack tester of Pamper’s wipes that gave your baby a bum rash anyway. Damn.
I think the most invasive and gross of everything is the Bounty ladies that come round after you’ve had your baby. Yes, that’s right, SALES REPS come into post-natal wards trying to sell you shit. I kid you not. This is not some dystopian nightmare.
No worries that a watermelon has just come out of your vagina, or through a hole cut into your tum. No worries that your hormones are going absolutely batshit as you try and navigate the first few hours or days of parenthood, and breastfeeding, and being responsible for something. No worries if you’re on antibiotics, need a blood transfusion or still have your catheter in.
Here they come, pressurising you to have photos of your newborn taken. What package would you like? Will daddy want a key ring? Do you want a bounty pack? There’s 10 free wipes in it, don’t you know!
Seriously, what on earth.
Mumsnet (before it became a hideous hive of transphobia) did some fantastic research and campaigning in 2012/13 on the issue, and of over 1000 women who gave birth, there were the following results:
- Over half (56%) of new mothers felt a Bounty rep invaded their privacy
- 60% were not specifically told their personal details would be passed on to other companies
- 82% don’t think hospitals should allow sales reps access to wards at all
In 17% of cases, Bounty reps implied that parents could only fill in child benefit forms that were supplied in the packs. This actually happened to me.
When the Bounty lady came round the ward I told her I was not interested (my adrenalin was through the roof as I knew I would have to tell them to bugger off at some point and had been anxious and tense about it all day).
She seemed truly baffled that I didn’t want the pack, and asked me if I was sure. I said I was and she replied that if I wanted to claim child benefit, the forms were in the pack. Couldn’t believe it, honestly, and I swiftly replied that I would do it online (I did as well, easy peasy).
She seem affronted and genuinely confused that I didn’t want her useless goodies or a bunch of seriously overpriced pictures of my newborn who was so puffy his mouth didn’t fit properly on his face.
But I suppose as they work on commission, you can’t really blame them… I can however blame Bounty, who are evil.
After Mumsnet’s campaign, some trusts did terminate their contracts with Bounty, and Bounty tightened up some of it’s rules (but obviously not well enough as I had bub in 2017).
If you, like me, are suitably incensed on the issue still, there is currently a petition you can sign. And if you’re pregnant, feel free to #boycottbounty on the ward. I will be again this December.
Stretchmark Sista 