Instamums

It started with a pack of baby wipes.

An innocent scroll through Instagram, done in the dead of night or in those early mornings when you’re zoned out as your children want to wake up at least an hour before you do, and you’re confronted with the dreaded #ad. On this occasion the product was an expensive brand of baby wipes, 99.9% water apparently, I don’t know and neither will I ever know as they cost £2.70 a packet. Almost £3 for something that wipes your baby’s bum. Now if you can afford that, great, carry on but as I glanced at the cube in the living room that contained my daughters changing bits and bobs, all I could see were the Huggies I’d bought on offer.

I will add at this point that my daughter, my third daughter, is almost nine months old and has had one sore bum. I researched and bought some metanium and it cleared up within 24 hours. My twins are almost five and they rarely did, save for the dreaded teething nappies that the internet says are myth and I can guarantee that nothing costing £3 went near their bottoms. I used Lush dream cream aka magic on anything untoward and that stuff is £11 but I would have it up there with arnica cream as a must have with children. I’m on tub 3 and it will be in my fridge for the rest of time.

This is not the point. The point is ads. The point is vulnerable women, new mums, thinking that they are doing their children a disservice at best and harm at worst for not using a product advertised by their favourite instamum. Nappies are the product at the moment, I have seen several YouTube videos in the last few weeks promoting a certain brand of nappy. Well, I can tell you now that Lidl’s Lupilu nappies are a complete dupe for that brand. The wipes are awful though, don’t go there, trust me.

I am thirty eight, Poppy is my third child, I know largely what I’m doing and what works. She is different to her sisters in many ways but in terms of care, we use what is on offer and olive oil cream that my parents bought us from Greece. I won’t be swayed or influenced by what a mum says on Instagram but I do worry about the implications not only on people’s finances if they are so influenced. And the mental health of a young mum who can’t afford the posh nappies or the admittedly beautiful nursery funded entirely by a furniture website.

What angers me further is that all of these people can afford all of the above themselves. All of it. Maybe they do gift it without us seeing, maybe they make a donation to a foodbank or a womens shelter, but they certainly don’t show that. There is a wonderful blogger trying to change this, but starting with the brands and the companies themselves and I hope it works, it needs to change, the idea of Instagram funding a family, a whole life, a really good life is nuts in itself but at least, this would go some way to making the whole thing a little more transparent.

But baby wipes. Use whatever. The economy ones from Waitrose are excellent, the others are just fine, the expensive ones that are entirely water are good too. It’s your baby and you know them best.

And put it on Instagram. After all, you paid for it!