£2500 for a Baby planner - your help needed please!

[JustineMumsnet]

We've been asked to write a very short comment for the Guardian on a new service available to pregnant mums outlined here . Am guessing that not too many Mumsnetters would part with the dosh which would buy an awful lot of Fruit Shoots in later years , but I may be wrong?
Do let us know your thoughts.
Thanks
MNHQ

[PinkTulips]

but why would anyone give up on all the fun bits of pregnancy?

buying all the lovely clothes and equipment is the only joy you have while huge and fat and aching all over!

[Pitchounette]

Message withdrawn

[motherinferior]

I was a bit crap at being pregnant (what with being in major denial in second stage labour and all). Fortunately my sister had had a baby (son) the previous year. So DP and I drove to Newcastle, filled his car with Stuff, and drove back to my flat.

Don't think I bought anything for DD1 during her first year of life.

[twelveyeargap]

I have two friends who are both pregnant and both detest shopping. Both yawn at the mere mention of the word "pushchair". However; I love it all and am happily doling out tailored advice for free and one of the ladies was actually not kidding when she said I could give her a list, or she would give me the money to get everything for her. (I have given her a shopping list for her own clothes before, which she acted upon!)

However; there are two chances (none and f-all), that either of them would pay £2500 for my services. And neither of them are short of a bob or two!

[colditz]

First 3 sentences have3 totally put me off. I wouldn't do this even if it was free. Half the fun of having children is, well, having them. I don'#t want to spend the next 15 years baking biscuits and sitting in the library. I want to pick bedroom furniture, I like looking at pushchairs!

[MarsLady]

I think I know that person Marina

[Marina]

In circumstances such as those (or maybe someone pregnant abroad but due to come back to the UK to give birth) soapbox, keely's service sounds good. I had a friend who was bedbound with severe placenta praevia from 22 weeks and her dp had to buy everything, with predictably ludicrous results.
But tbh auditioning buggies, surfing endless cute baby clothes sites and timewasting on Mn was the fun part of being pregnant and compensated for the piles, the heartburn etc.
But, I had someone do a lot of this with me, not for me, gratis, Keely. She was called A Friend With Children Already. I think most women have one of those.

[Soapbox]

Whilst not a service I would ever have used - like shopping too much - it may very well have been useful to a friend of mine who was hospitalised from 22 weeks with twins, until delivery at 34 weeks, then had twins in SCBU for 3 months ish.

I am sure she would have relished having someone to arrange a mat nurse to look after the first baby to go home, whilst she was at hospital with the other baby - and to help choose all the basic equipment etc which put her under a lot of stress at a time when she was dealing with very sick babies.

Perhaps not everyone's way of doing things, but would have been useful in those special circumstances

[HandyTrinkett]

although I'd be slightly of the opinion that if you can't be arsed to do the research yourself for what is probably the biggest life changing experience you'll have then you should probably think seriously about whether you actually want a child.

runs away before he gets hit with a big stick

[MrsBadger]

how interetsing - I remember the 'I'm thinking of setting up this service' posts a few months ago here and here .

I'm sure she's right in that many of us can't pop round the corner to our mum's for cosy chats about vests, and the pressure to Get It Right means people do seek more paid-for advice than they have done in the past, but I still think her service has a very small market.

[kiskidee]

"For every woman who wants to dedicate herself solely to her unborn child, there?s a City high-flyer who wants children, not pregnancy. And they?re both right."


sounds like there is an awful lot of City high-flyers out there. but yes, they are both right, even if imo your maths is well off target.

[MarsLady]

Thanks for posting her defence... I mean response.

She just doesn't get mumsnet or the fact that you asked for response from an incredibly wide parent base.

I don't like it when you disagree with someone and they pull out the sisterhood card. I have no problems with her offering her service... but I don't know many, if any, who would take it up. Plus... she's gonna have to get a tougher skin if her business is going to survive. Not everyone is going to like it.

She says "I think women are all too quick to attack the way that other women handle pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood. Instead maybe we should realise that there is no right or wrong way to approach it. For every woman who wants to dedicate herself solely to her unborn child, there?s a City high-flyer who wants children, not pregnancy. And they?re both right."

She's getting her knickers in a twist needlessly. We're not attacking how people bring up their children. I'm reasonably sure that we have some city high-flyers here (get back to work at once lol). We're simply saying that the service is not for us. And so to quote Keely "maybe we should realise that there is no right or wrong way to approach it" Goes both ways babe!

[Flamesparrow]

Awww

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello everyone,
The founder of Babyplanners dropped me a line saying that she didn't think the recent press about her business had been entirely fair. So we suggested she posted a response on Mumsnet... which is as follows:

Hi, Keely here, founder of Babyplanners.
Just felt the need to defend myself and appeal for a sense of sisterhood.
First of all, the £2,500 price tag is a bit of a media invention. The initial session is actually £100 and I come to your home or office for an informal chat about everything.
I set up the company because it's a service I would have appreciated when I was first pregnant. I started off informally advising friends and friends-of-friends and then it developed. There's nothing cynical or sinister about it.
It's about cutting to the chase in finding the best products - not necessarily the most expensive ones. It's about stopping people wasting money on £500 pushchair they'll trade in for a Maclaren five months in. Or expensive change bags when a toiletry bag inside your normal bags does the trick.
And we recommend different ergonomic baby carriers, for example, that people shopping on the high street would never come across. These ones don't kill your back! And it's about saving time.
When I was pregnant with my first baby I was really busy, the first of my friends to have a baby and I didn?t have an older sister or sister-in-law to advise me. (Mums are great but things had changed a bit in the 29 years since she had me.)
Yes, there were online forums then but I wanted to keep up with my usual group of friends - plus I didn't feel a lifechange until after I had my baby.
Sure, some people enjoy shopping and buying everything available and that?s great; that?s their take. But for a lot of women, being faced by a bewildering array of unfamiliar products isn?t something they relish the thought of - especially when they?re heavily pregnant. Similarly, wading through reams of internet research in the wee hours when all you want to do is sleep isn?t everyone's idea of fun.
I think women are all too quick to attack the way that other women handle pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood. Instead maybe we should realise that there is no right or wrong way to approach it. For every woman who wants to dedicate herself solely to her unborn child, there?s a City high-flyer who wants children, not pregnancy. And they?re both right.

[LIZS]

Wasn't there a thread on here about a year or so back asking whether busy mums-to-be would pay for a personal shopping service for all their "needs" . Got shot down iirc.

[Imafairy]

And the completed article is here

[Twiglett]

Bugger am I too late to be cribbed

not that I'd be cribbed

but I'd still like the opportunity

crib - cribbage - cribdom

[Ladymuck]

But in terms of a service I can't see that it actually saves me a huge amount of time. The problem with looking for you very first buggy is that you have no idea what a travel system is or what might be important in choosing one for you. I would have happily paid £2.5k for someone just to magically turn up with everything that I needed for the first 4 years of my children's life, but they wouldn't have been able to do that without knowing a heck of a lot about me and my family and my preferences. If I still have to spend 3 hours going through buggy options explaining whether I want it for jogging or shopping of whatever, then frankly I'd go for Mumsnet everytime. (In fact I found mumsnet whilst trying to understand what a travel system was!)

Sorry Justine - can't see the Guardian printing "Waste of time and money, join Mumsnet and make friends for life as well - for free!", but can't think of anything else. Where's MP?

[Twiglett]

I'm actually quite saddened by that service

Basically it helps to keep the extremely wealthy emotionally cut off from their families.

If this becomes a 'must-have' service because it is just so menial to learn, develop and plan for your own children then what does that say about our society?

The great thing about being human is our endless ability to learn new things, when you give up the opportunity to learn about a new and extremely important part of your life ..having a child. Yes you might make mistakes, but you'll also learn and develop new friendships and bonds. If you delegate this part of your life then don't you, per se, give up on a very great part of the joy of being alive.

I think those who are even tempted to use this type of service may well find that they have turned into the vaccuous, pathetic individual that people in the 'meejah' display them as.


floating, walnut shelf anyone?

[satine]

I bet they'd land you with all kinds of stuff that you use once or twice. And really mad stuff like dry clean only cashmere babygros and china mugs. Honestly. There are too many people in this world with far more money than sense.

[zippitippitoes]

this must be the ultimate puffery of a job..middle men are always a waste of money and this is somewhere at the vanishing point of unnecessariness

[CODNoMore]

id pay 3mk to avoid any mum zillaS

[kiskidee]

when we have to sit around to choose who is going to leave on the rocket ship to the next planet we have to populate after we have totally fucked up this one, a baby planner will not on the list.

[zippitippitoes]

actually

if this was the scenario then i would spend some time choosing my nanny and then give her 2.5k to spend on baby stuff as she would be using it more than me by the sound of it